With unprecedented growth in Big Data Analytics and Cloud Computing, efficiency of network operations has become far more critical for operators than ever before. Inna Ott talks exclusively about the market and underlying opportunity areas
Description
Organisations are rapidly adopting big data analytics for tactical and strategic business decisions. As cloud computing and big data analytics grows so would the need for innovative and sophisticated solutions to test the performance of the network and equipment.
While this market is making significant strides in terms of growth numbers, the over size of the market remain small given its early stages. This makes the market not only interesting for investors and service providers, it is also intriguing to the end users who have traditionally remained skeptical about adopting new technology.
To understand more about this market and the underlying opportunities we sought inputs from Inna Ott. Inna is the Director of Marketing at Polystar Group, Germany
Tim: What are the top factors driving Big Data and Cloud Analytics market growth globally? Anything that is restraining market from reaching its full potential?
Inna: We are not mainly focused on big data in general but the somewhat more specialised topic of big network, or telco data. The driver here is generally in line with overall needs, however.
It’s all about insight – companies want to understand better what their customers are doing and how their operations perform. In the case of telcos, that means understanding the network, how customers consume and interact with services delivered across these networks, and how their devices perform.
Information has always been available from networks but it has largely been neglected.
That’s changing as solutions that can cope with the large volumes of data have been brought to market. The key is to unify different sources of data (network, service, device) and to combine them into a single picture from which insights can be derived in both real-time – of primary concern to telcos – and also historically, so that predictions can be made.
A key problem has been making that data accessible, rather than something that needs interpretation by experts. Polystar’s key innovation has been to transform the usability of such data, which is a critical step to realising its true value.
Tim: What are some of the key technological trends in the Big Data and Cloud Analytics test services market?
Inna: We are moving from the ability to capture and correlate complex information to the ability to make it accessible. This trend must and will accelerate – otherwise, there will be limited insights available from the data we are collecting and storing.
Tim: Who are the key participants in the market? Strengths and weaknesses?
Inna: Rather than commenting on other players, it would be better to see telco big data as an ecosystem, in which knowledge, awareness and insight is being collectively spread.
We are playing our part as innovators and as being responsible for the delivery of solutions but so too are our telco partners. They create needs and demands which drive further ecosystem development.
There are also other vendors with embedded solutions to which we must all connect to create an open framework for both the collection and the use of such data.
Tim: What market segments, regional markets, and end user segments demonstrate the highest growth?
Inna: Our focus is on telcos. It’s difficult to note a regional focus – our customers are all over the world and many are actively pursing programmes to capitalise on data. It’s more that the purpose of the data consumption is changing – it’s not just network operations, it’s customer care teams, product management – so we are seeing increased diversity in the use and increasing demand.
However, it’s also true that a secondary market (in which operators sell data to third parties) is really only just beginning. While we can expect this to take off in the future, it’s lagging behind internal consumption and motivation.
References
More about Inna Ott
Inna Ott has more than 15 year’s experience in the communications industry. Prior to joining Polystar, she held a number of sales and marketing positions in leading organisations.
Since 2013 Inna has been leading Polystar’s marketing department, with responsibility for Global Marketing and Corporate Communications.
Inna’s primary focus is to drive increased global demand for Polystar’s solutions, by growing the visibility, recognition and awareness of Polystar’s brand. Inna holds a master’s degree in Philology.
You can follow Inna on her LinkedIn profile
