The TM Forum, Tektronix Communications and China Mobile said on Tuesday they have collaborated on a new set of best practices for operators for big data analytics.
The TMF Big Data Analytics Best Practices Project has issued a report as part of TM Forum’s latest release of Frameworx 13 geared to help operators make sense of the complexities of big data in a standardized way.
“As we go around the world and talk to mobile network operators, we found there’s complete confusion around big data, and everyone’s got their own spin around what big data means,” explains Laurence Alexander, marketing VP at Tekcomm. “So we’re trying to force a standard around big data and what it means for mobile operators.”
The goal is also to get operators to understand what big data to focus on and what to ignore, Alexander added. “One of the big issues we’re seeing is that operators have so much big data that they don’t know what to do with it and what to monitor and measure. For us, the important thing is knowing what to measure, why to measure it, how to break it down by user and persona, and help operators target users.”
The TM Forum report is broken into two sections - a detailed reference model describing the tools and functionality required to put together a big data stack inside the network, and a detailed set of business use cases, showing operators a variety of methods for extracting value from big data.
In Phase 2 of the project, the project team will deliver a Big Data Analytics Guidebook and an update to the technical report, with more best practices and use cases. That phase will conclude in Q3 this year.
China Mobile is a charter sponsor of the project, and has already begun implementing the best practices described in the report, according to a statement from China Mobile spokesperson Jing Shang. “We can already see the benefit of these best practices, new processes and workflows, and are looking forward to the next phase of the project.”