What’s the real adoption rate of telecom analytics and big data solutions in the telecom sector? Observers interviewed for an upcoming feature report believe that both technologies will remain hot topics over the next 18 months, since most carriers are still in the evaluation stage. As the technology research company Technavio notes in its recent report, one of the major drivers of big data growth is the data explosion across telecom enterprises.
Although many telecoms are in the early stages of adoption, there is a good outlook for analytics and big data solutions in this industry. TechNavio’s analysts forecast that the global big data market in the telecom sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 55.24% over the period 2011-2015.
According to TechNavio, there has been an aggressive introduction of user-friendly predictive modeling tools, which are offered either independently or as embedded features of big data solutions. A Technavio expects that IBM and SAS Institute will further develop and enhance their present usability features in predictive modeling tools. The research firm also names EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and SAP AG as key vendors dominating this market space.
Ovum released a report in January that examines the competitive dynamics of the market for business intelligence (BI) and analytics aimed at telecoms. According to the report, there is strong vendor activity as technology suppliers enhance their capabilities to meet existing demands and anticipate new requirements.
Ovum analyst Sagun Bali cites SAS, IBM, Oracle and HP, along with smaller firms including Tibco and QlikTech, as vendors that are addressing telcoms’ evolving BI and analytics needs. “Oracle, IBM and SAS, each with mature and sophisticated offerings, are the overall leaders in the BI market for telcos,” Bali stated.
Ovum’s report indicates that vendors are making great progress in offering solutions tailored for telecoms. “Because of their immense growth potential, telcos are a key strategic focus for all vendors with vertical-specific offerings,” the report states.
One of the consequences of big data is that it creates a huge demand for storage, which is a critical piece of infrastructure. IDC has forecasted that the storage market will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53% between 2011 and 2016 due to big data growth.
IDC’s research director for storage systems, Ashish Nadkarni, noted that storage will be one of the biggest areas of infrastructure spending related to big data and analytics over the forecasted period. Revenue from storage consumed by big data and analytics (BD&A) environments will increase from a $379.9 million in 2011 to nearly $6 billion in 2016.
Nadkarni explained that this growth will come largely from capacity-optimized systems (including dense enclosures). However, some users will also turn to software-based distributed storage systems with internal disks to store post-processed data.
What else is happening in the market:
- Two announcements from Teradata: the company introduced the Teradata Enterprise Access for Hadoop and a global strategic partnership with Siemens Smart Grid Division for big data in the utility sector.
- IBM makes a $1 billion investment in Flash technology to speed up big data analytics for enterprises. The company also announced it would open 12 new Centers of Competency to increase client engagement with its Flash solutions. In addition, IBM said Sprint Nextel recently completed a deal to install nine Flash storage systems at Sprint Nextel’s data center for a total of 150TB of additional Flash storage. The company was looking for a way to improve the performance and efficiency of its phone activation application.
The RCR Wireless News telecom analytics series provides weekly insights on trends, new products and other topics that touch on the advantages and monetization opportunities of analytics tools for telecom operators, including big data, business intelligence, customer experience analysis and management, business analytics and network analytics.
