SAP supports mobile data monetization for operators

SAP has launched a new big data analytics solution designed to help mobile operators monetize the data in their networks, from collection to processing and the marketing of that data.
The new cloud-based mobile service, SAP Consumer Insight 365,  relies on the SAP HANA platform and is now commercially available. SAP’s first carrier customer for the solution is Iusacell, the third-largest wireless telecom company in Mexico.
Revenues from mobile data traffic and new networks have not been growing at the rate that operators would like to see, and OTT providers have cut into revenues as well. While some big data analytics offerings (such as the recent launch from Amdocs) have focused on helping operators increase operational efficiencies and cut costs by proactively keeping customers happy, another approach to big data involves the sale of mobile network data to other verticals, thereby creating a new revenue stream for carriers.
Several billion SMS messages are routed through SAP each day, according to Jim Brooks, global business development director of consumer insight for SAP Mobile Services — so the company already has connections with more than 900 operators, he noted.
“Mobile has now matured into a media channel in its own right,” Brooks said. However, mobile has lagged in the quantified insight and intelligence on the people who buy in, recommend or utilize it as a channel, he added. SAP aims to fill that gap with the new solution, by gathering data directly from the network, making it anonymous so that individual users cannot be identified, and processing it via SAP HANA for analytics purposes.
SAP says that data that could identify any specific mobile user “never leaves the mobile operator’s systems.”
Vaibhav Vohra, director of product management for SAP Mobile Services, said that operators may not have the same reach that SAP does with other businesses that would be interested in their data; and they are likely to not want to make the necessary investment in the infrastructure necessary to process that data to make it valuable, and the sales force to sell that data.