Video: European Communications Big Data Seminar 2015
Videos from European Communications' fourth annual big data seminar featuring Telefónica, Amdocs, Arthur D Little and Ineoquest are now available to view.
The event, held last week in London, brought in delegates from across the telco industry to discuss how telcos are progressing with their big data strategies.
Key findings from European Communications' latest big data survey kicked off the half-day seminar. Click here to see all the presentations on our YouTube channel.
Richard Benjamins, Director of Big Data at Telefónica, used several examples to demonstrate how the Spain-based operator is attempting to extract value from big data.
Benjamins suggested that telcos should integrate big data analytics across their entire business, rather than establishing specific departments.
He said: "You can see how big data can help you to do interesting things, but creating value from big data can't be taken for granted.
"It's not only about technology. It's about data, processes, use cases and people. It's important to be clear on where you are in each of those.
"Apply to as many use cases as you can. Start with the big ones and the simple ones in order to be able to show value as soon as possible. Companies tend to look at internal data. It's important, but there's so much more to create value."
Meanwhile Vikram Gupta, Manager at consulting firm Arthur D Little, provided an assessment of the big data strategies of European telcos.
Gupta explained that big data was a key focus of operators looking to reverse a decline in core revenues.
However, he said some were still struggling to get a grasp on where analytics should fall in their business.
Gupta said: "The problem is that the data is currently in silos. That just does not give you the overall perspective that you need to attract, retain and wow the customer. What [operators] really need to do is move away from the siloed organisation.
"They need to move into an analytical organisation that takes much larger data sets than we have been traditionally taking so they are able to take not only internal data but also external data sets."
Bridging the gaps between data silos was another discussion point during the event.
Stuart Newton, Ineoquest's VP of Corporate Strategy, spoke of the challenges operators face in delivering multiscreen video services.
He said: "In a lot of the discussions we've had over the last few years, one of the big themes that's come up a lot with the operators is the fact that you can collect a lot of video analytics but a lot of it is going into silos and you can't correlate it."
Newton suggested that a "common video language" was necessary across all content providers in order to create a "currency of quality" across the entire end-to-end chain.
He explained: "The move to video CEM management is driving the need for advanced correlated analytics across multiple planes: end-to-end, across multiple networks and across multiple services. To do that we've got to bridge multiple data silos."
The event was sponsored by Amdocs. The vendor's Director of Big Data Marketing, Matt Roberts, outlined some of the learnings 12 months on from the launch of a big data platform.
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