AT&T (NYSE: T) Labs won gold in the 2014 Edison Awards' research and business optimization category for its nanocube, which provides visualization technology to help users interpret massive datasets in real time.
The technology was announced in October 2013 via a blog entry from John Donovan, senior executive vice president of AT&T technology and network operations. He explained that AT&T created the technology to help understand its own network, but it can be applied to any massively large dataset.
"Users can create models connecting billions of data points--or quickly zoom into smaller sets. And unlike other visualization tools, nanocubes don't require a supercomputer. Visualizations can be done within a Web browser," he wrote.
Source: AT&T Labs Research
According to Donovan, the technology was enabled by software breakthroughs, the power of the cloud and exposed APIs. AT&T released the software into the open source environment so others can use it and build upon it.
"Nanocubes can work with any business or application that works with location-based data," said Stephen North, executive director, AT&T Labs technical research, in a video.
Big data analytics are an increasingly important topic for mobile operators as they seek to optimize their networks to handle increasing amounts of user traffic.
AT&T also won a gold Edison Award in the electronic funding solutions category for its "dynamically debiting donations technology," which is a text-to-donate technology.
The Edison Awards honor excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design and innovation. The awards are named for legendary U.S. inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
For more:
- see this Edison Awards release (PDF)
- see this AT&T blog entry
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