Amdocs launches big data analytics portfolio for telcos

Amdocs is building on its long history with the telecom industry as an OSS/BSS provider and expanding its big data analytics offerings for telcos, including access to its data scientists. The company says it is the first end-to-end provider of communications-specific big data solutions encompassing business and operational support systems (B/OSS), network and social media. “Amdocs is not entirely new to this space — far from it,” said Matt Roberts, director of marketing for big data and strategic innovation for Amdocs.
“The objective it to extend that into a much more comprehensive, carrier-grade platform, and a suite of analytics apps that feed off all the domains in a service provider’s business.”
The company’s portfolio in big data analytics leverages several of its recent acquisitions, including Actix for Radio Access Network optimization and Celcite Management Solutions. Amdocs said at the time that it purchased Actix for $120 million, that the move would position it as the first vendor to offer customer experience-driven network optimization based on a holistic view of the customer experience across all networks, BSS and OSS. With Celcite, the $129 million acquisition was aimed at expanding Amdocs’ customer experience portfolio “further into the network software domain to manage customer experience across both networks and IT,” Amdocs said.   
The new portfolio includes:

• Big data applications specific to the needs of service providers, including network optimization, operational optimization, contextual marketing and customer care and experience. Amdocs is launching what it’s calling customer network experience (CNE) applications that combine data from the network and “other core sources to address customer experience issues created by network performance.”
• Amdocs Insight Big Data Platform: A platform for integrating data from Amdocs’ systems and third party data sources. Amdocs said the platofrm “includes a telco-specific, rich customer data model specifically designed for the telecommunications market to facilitate actionable analytics.”
• Data-Science-as-a-Service, or DSaaS: While DSaaS may not be a household as-a-service name yet, Amdocs is offering the expertise of its data scientists to address specific problems that service providers have.

“In many instances, a lot of these problems that service providers face are unique to them,” said Roberts. “So we need the ability for ad hoc apps and use cases, with data-science-as-a-service.”
Some heavy hitters from outside the telco space will compete with Amdocs in its bid to provide big data analytics for carriers. IBM and SAP both have some traction already in this market. IBM says that a Tier 1 service provider in the U.S. has used its solutions to enhance call center productivity with real-time customer and product data.