Provided executive voice development and copywriting services for a series of deep dive C-Suite blog posts, as Manager of Content Marketing at Integra.

1. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 1/10
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Home » Executive Insights • Technology • Top Stories ­ March 2014
» Bridging the Telecom and Data Divide
Bridging the Telecom and Data
Divide
By Robert McCarroll On March 19, 2014 In Executive Insights, Technology,
Top Stories ­ March 2014 1 Comment
Four Steps to Transforming Your Business
Big Data. To most people, it’s the latest buzzword, the next frontier for
achieving competitive advantage. For Communications Service
Providers (CSPs)—it’s an everyday part of how we do business.
CSPs have always lived in the world of Big Data. Everything we do as
a networking and communications company generates data – from
network performance, to bandwidth utilization, to traffic prioritization,
and service delivery—packets of information are quite literally flowing
non­stop throughout our operation. And the volume is growing, with
network performance and utilization reaching unprecedented levels as
XaaS adoption moves workloads to the clouds.
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2. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 2/10
The challenge for CSPs like Integra, and telecom as a whole, has
never been a dearth of information, but rather the ability to analyze it
across disparate business units in real­time to gain actionable insights
and drive improvement. In “Analytics: Real­World Use of Big Data in
Telecommunications,” the IBM Institute for Business Value states that,
more than in any other industry, CSPs define Big Data as the
capabilities needed to perform real­time information analysis, with 40%
taking this view in comparison with 15% of respondents across other
industries.
As a recent Heavy Reading study, sponsored by Huawei on “Big Data
and Advanced Analytics in Telecom: a Multi­Billion Dollar Revenue
Opportunity” asserts:
“Service providers are sitting on terabytes of data that are stored in
silos and scattered across the organization…however, most service
providers suffer from real­time decision­making challenges. Most
operational decisions are either made manually, or they’re hardcoded
inside the business/operations support system application, which
means they are not dynamic and cannot keep up with changing
business environments.”
We are literally sitting on a gold mine of digital data, with the
opportunity to understand our customers and improve service delivery
at an unparalleled level. It’s a priceless corporate asset, particularly in
an increasingly competitive environment, with the potential to deliver
significant competitive advantage across the value chain, including:
network infrastructure and management, service delivery, operational
efficiency, marketing and sales, and product innovation—all of which
directly impact the customer experience.
There’s nothing but upside to the exploration of Big Data in telecom,
and yet, as an industry, we’re behind the curve on mining its
opportunities. In the IBM 2013 Global CMO study, over 53% of
telecommunications CMOs said that data will have the greatest impact
on their organization over the next three to five years (Tweet this!), but
more than 70% of those same respondents feel unprepared to deal
with its complexity or speed. In the 2013 Global C­Suite Study, 55% of
CIOs report concerns that they’re missing a scalable foundation for Big
Data. This may explain why only 16% of COOs are currently using
advanced analytics to inform decisions, while 76% are planning (or
perhaps hoping) to do so in the next two to five years (Tweet this!).
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3. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 3/10
So what’s stopping us as an industry? And more, importantly, how do
we get out of our own way?
There are many ways to answer those questions, I suppose, with a
variety of explanations and suggested paths forward. To simplify, I’d
say that we, as an industry, need to commit to change in four core
areas.
1. Breaking Down Barriers to Organizational Collaboration
As previously stated, it’s not a lack of data that’s the problem. It’s
the ability to connect it all in a 360 degree view across the
organization that is the top operational challenge for service
providers. Fixing that requires fundamental changes in both
attitudes toward collaboration, and the analytical capabilities that
enable it.
Telecom is an industry that has traditionally functioned in silos and
it’s time for that to change. To quote one technology Chief Supply
Chain Officer from the IBM study “we need to collaborate and
create a transparent supply chain.” We need to learn from Over­
The­Top (OTT) providers like Google and Facebook who treat
data as king, with virtually every product decision flowing from
what the available data says about customers and how it can be
used.
At Integra, we’re working on doing this exact thing, moving away
from thinking of data on the operational side as an end to
business process improvements, and instead looking at how it can
enable improvements in other areas of the organization, including
product development, customer service delivery and industry
innovation. We’re investigating how we can leverage security­
related data, and other information to add value to customers and
across the ecosystem.
Other Chief Operations and Supply Chain Officers seem to be
moving in the same direction, however slowly, with 56% expecting
more openness in the coming years, and a drastic increase in
supply chain integration within the next five.
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4. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
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Source: IBM C­Suite Study
The bottom line here is that any Big Data pilot program needs to
be cross­functional to succeed—with representation from network
operations, IT, product development, finance, marketing and
perhaps even customers, who can all bring their varied functional
expertise to the table.
2. Bringing Advanced Analytics Capabilities to the Table
Of course, the other half of this equation is a move towards
advanced analytics, which offer more robust collaboration and
insight capabilities to support cross­departmental efforts.
Analytics have grown up since the good old days, and we need to
keep pace. Check out this chart for an easy comparison between
Legacy Analytics vs. Big Data (aka “Advanced”) Analytics.

5. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 5/10
Source: Heavy Reading, “Big Data & Advanced Analytics in
Telecom,” Sponsored by Huawei
Advanced analytics don’t replace traditional or legacy analytics,
but instead “fill in the gaps” between structured and unstructured
data, allowing for richer context and deeper insight, while helping
eliminate silos gradually and organically with improved decision
making across the organization.
Big Data analytics also enable predictive planning, an area with
huge potential upside for the industry (Tweet this!). Imagine, for
example, if we were able to use the information advanced
alarming systems provide us about failures to predict the
conditions that lead to them? What about the information we have
about our customers’ networks? Perhaps several minutes worth of
overutilization on a single VPN link is not cause for alarm, or a
minor fan tray warning, but we can begin to compile and trend
across thousands of circuits, alarms, and conditions to predict
when the aggregate of smaller occurrences will spell imminent
failure. The possibilities are endless.
3. Leading with Existing Data, Not Objectives, To Uncover
New Insights
Although the temptation might be to look at Big Data through the
lens of solving business challenges, the smarter path is to avoid
the old­school top­down method of setting up a problem to be
solved and looking for a path to solving it. This approach is
inherently flawed, as it lends itself to bias, and usually doesn’t
yield any real revelations.
As a great article by global consulting firm Booz & Co.
recommending a bottom­up approach states, “Data has no
agenda. It’s incorruptible, it has no boss, it doesn’t want to be
promoted, and it doesn’t quit.” (Tweet this!)
CSPs need to start with the data that’s readily available and see
where it leads, being prepared to act quickly and iteratively, in
agile cycles not burdened down by the usual approvals and gating
processes. The data has to be allowed to speak for itself, bringing
out the obvious connections, as well as the unexpected, ultimately

6. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 6/10
leading to insights that provide a holistic view of the customer and
a transparent view of the operation that serves them. This not only
is the path of least resistance, it also allows us to focus on the
most mature, well­understood data available to us.
Source: Booz & Company, Benefiting from Big Data: A New
Approach for the Telecom Industry
More than half of CSPs are using internal data as the primary
source of data within their organizations, which suggests huge
untapped potential still exists within its troves. We need to
continue to take a pragmatic approach towards sourcing and
approaching data analysis, while investigating new methods to
ferret out analytical insights with enhanced tools.
4. Focusing On Customer­Centric Outcomes and
Improvements
Finally, at the end of the day, the customer has to be at the center
of everything we do as service providers. It’s a cutthroat world out
there, and increasingly the customer is in control, as they rightly
should be. Not only do we have to be competitive, we need to give
our newly empowered customers “reasons to believe” by
continuously focusing on their needs and how we can better serve
them.
Next to delivering on shareholders expectations of increasing
revenues and reducing Opex, customer loyalty and customer
experience rank as the highest business objectives for telecom

7. 2/10/2015 Big Data Analytics & Telecom: Business Intelligence Opportunities
http://blog.integratelecom.com/bridging-telecom-data-divide/ 7/10
providers in 2014.
Source: Heavy Reading, “Big Data & Advanced Analytics in
Telecom,” Sponsored by Huawei
It’s a huge driver for us at Integra, where we vow to “measure our
success through the eyes of our customers” by delivering
“Technology you trust. People you know.” It’s our objective to set
ourselves apart from the competition by offering a superior
customer experience, with high­touch, responsive service and
reliable products tailored to our customers’ business success.
Big Data can only advance us in the pursuit of understanding our
customers and connecting with them in ways they value. That is
why we, as an organization, and in my department as a part of
that organization, are moving quickly to implement the above four
steps to reap its rewards. It won’t be easy, but it will be
transformative—helping us better understand, predict, and give
customers what they want today, and tomorrow.
Data is part of the operational DNA of our organization, as a
networking and communications company. It’s inherent in everything
we do, which is why its intrinsic value can often be overlooked or goes
unnoticed. It’s our job as service providers to look deeper, more closely
at what may very well turn out to be the most valuable, unintended
resource we have as an industry. Please join me in this effort.
I look forward to your comments and collaborating with you.