Big Data Insight. Making better decisions with network and subscriber intelligence. Use Cases for Big Data Insight SOLUTIONS BRIEF

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1 Big Data Insight Making better decisions with network and subscriber intelligence Use Cases for Big Data Insight Sandvine s network intelligence based insight has become a key part of operator Big Data efforts, improving customer experience, getting more from network assets, and delivering greater marketing success. Service Quality of Experience (QoE) Monitoring Identify and track application traffic to deliver better experiences and foresee changes that could impact the quality of services delivered. Network Planning with ScoreCard Find and rate network service trouble spots, using service quality scores to prioritize corrective actions and CapEx investment. Subscriber Marketing Integrate subscriber insight with Big Data systems to create more compelling offers and to target more receptive groups of prospects. Executive Decisioning Use network and subscriber data to track progress against strategic KPIs or gain fact based insight for better operational decisions. SOLUTION OVERVIEW Operators worldwide are regularly leveraging Big Data analytics for their strategic and operational activities, and this practice is only accelerating. Big Data activities are providing executives and managers alike with better information for more informed decisions. This insight can be of great consequence for driving the direction of operator services and investments as well as monitoring and ensuring that subscribers get the experiences that they expect and the offers and services that are most relevant to them. The power of Big Data activities largely depends on the usefulness of the data that is available for analysis. Good decisions are often based on multiple factors and require additional analysis for the appropriate conclusions to be reached. Sandvine s network intelligence data collection and insight provide invaluable views into network performance, service delivery, subscriber activity, customer quality of experience, and more. Operators are actively broadening their efforts to integrate this network intelligence data into their analytics and decision making processes so they may get the very most from their business activities. USE CASE TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW Sandvine s solutions deliver extensive network intelligence that is critical for operator Big Data efforts. The PacketLogic platform provides rich network and subscriber data that is broad in scope and specific in nature, assisting operators with new ways of viewing their business challenges and deeper insight across many network service and customer factors such as device in use, location, cell site and access network specifics, quality of service delivery, subscriber behavior, application and content consumption and much more. This network intelligence is used by operators worldwide to make more well informed, fact-based decisions that drive better results. Sandvine also provides dedicated analytics tools such as ScoreCard, Engineering Insights, and LiveView. ScoreCard measures and monitors operator ability to deliver the most important services to subscribers and rates the quality of those services as delivered. Engineering Insights and LiveView provide views into many more specific factors that determine service quality and can heavily impact customer experience. Operators use these tools for activities such as tracking progress against strategic or operational KPIs, determining network investment priorities, monitoring traffic patterns and customer behavior, and troubleshooting network problem areas as well as incorporating insight from these tools into Big Data activities. PacketLogic can collect and provide insight in both inline and passive configurations depending on operator need. Regardless of the approach chosen, PacketLogic can deliver network intelligence data over commonly used interfaces and formats such ODBC, IPFix, and CSV. Customer Care, Network Operations, Network Engineering, CTO/CIO, Product Management, Marketing, and Senior Executives can all benefit from the Big Data Insight Solution. 1

2 USE CASE COMPONENTS Mandatory Licenses PacketLogic Base DRDL & Signatures Optional Licenses Integration for Enrichment Engineering Insights ScoreCard Insights Storage IPFix ODBC Policy Enforcement w/gx USE CASES There are multiple use cases that are part of the Big Data Insight solution. All use cases rely on the PacketLogic Base software, DRDL & Signatures, and optional software can be leveraged to provide more subscriber and service visibility and control. The key Big Data Insight use cases are service quality of experience monitoring, network planning, subscriber marketing, and executive decisioning. The use cases help operators to retain customers, drive new business initiatives, sell more services, and optimize their network spend. Service Quality of Experience (QoE) Monitoring There are many determinants of customer experience, but none are more important than the quality of experience associated with the most popular and critical applications and services. Operators need to be able to identify the applications that are most important to their customers as well as dig deeper into how these applications are delivered, the types of customers, service plans, and devices using these applications, and other traffic related factors such as throughput, latency, and packet loss. Leading network operators are now combining modern network intelligence technology with big data analytical techniques to know more about how well they deliver service quality and the network capabilities required to deliver better customer experiences. As a case in point, see Figure 1 below. The downstream throughput image shows bandwidth consumption by application. Of the popular applications and services in use, YouTube is the single largest user of bandwidth on this network. Clearly, this operator should monitor YouTube traffic as one way of ensuring the delivery of a reasonable subscriber quality of experience. In the adjoining heat map image, the operator is using Engineering Insights to identify where packet loss is adversely affecting YouTube services. Each hexagon in the heat map is an area of one or more cell sites, with the color legend showing lighter shades of blue to be lower in latency and darker blue, greens, browns, and red brown to show increasingly severe areas of packet loss. The operator can then delve deeper into the areas of concern, isolating problems and addressing them as required. Figure 1 IDENTIFYING KEY APPLICATIONS AND CHANGING REQUIREMENTS FINDING APPLICATION TROUBLE SPOTS 2

3 SOLUTIONS CASE STUDY BRIEF NetFlix bandwidth usage must be carefully monitored as more NetFlix content becomes 4K enabled and subscribers come to expect higher video resolution. Network Planning with ScoreCard The aim of network planning analytics is to steer network investments to the right places and achieve more with less. Sandvine can assist with network planning in multiple ways, with the focus here being on the unique analytical contributions that ScoreCard provides. The ScoreCard solution gives operators an understanding of their ability to deliver network service quality in key areas important to subscribers. ScoreCard provides a rating of A to F for the following key services: web surfing, streaming video, social media, real-time gaming, file upload, file download, and voice applications. Figure 2 shows how ratings from January could be used as a basis for identifying areas of future investment and then showing the outcomes that could occur from January through December of a given year. Ratings can also be made at more granular levels to aid with troubleshooting quality problems and prioritizing investment decisions. Figure 3 provides an example of a ScoreCard heat map that shows the locations of cell sites and rates their service quality from A through F. In this case, the operator has isolated its worse performing areas and is evaluating where to troubleshoot, monitor, or consider for further investment. Note, these ratings were chosen to be for video traffic only (see blue video icon in upper right) and for customers subscribing to the Diamond plan (see Diamond designation in upper left part of the heat map). Figure 2 HOW SCORECARD IS USED TO DRIVE IMPROVEMENTS A B C D E F A B C D E F January December Figure 3 FOCUSING ON AREAS WITH LOWER QUALITY SCORES 3

4 SOLUTIONS CASE STUDY BRIEF Today s operator executives view good customer experience as a key business success factor. Subscriber Marketing Operators have access to an extensive amount of customer information. Yet it is only when network intelligence data is added to the mix that many of the most interesting marketing opportunities can be realized. The following marketing initiatives are made much more compelling, relevant and valuable with the inclusion of network intelligence data. Offer creation and customer targeting. Offers are more relevant when contextual information such as subscriber time, place, type of device, and categories of interest are considered both in the shaping of offers and the targeting of prospects. Campaign demographics for 3rd parties. Operators are looking for more ways to monetize their data, and one avenue is to sell subscriber demographic information to 3rd parties for advertising or for other applications that require more in-depth demographic insight. Location identification. Network intelligence activities can identify subscriber whereabouts in real-time. Retail and other brick and mortar businesses could use this information to provide timely offers to subscribers that are within their vicinity. Figure 4 NETWORK INTELLIGENCE FEEDING A BIG DATA SYSTEM Sandvine PacketLogic Resources Big Data Marketing Resources Subscriber Data Analytics Campaign Management Sample Use Cases Packet Analytics CDR CRM Billing IN Network TV Log Data Stream Mdeiation Visualization Offer Creation Campaign Demographics Targeted Upsell Location Notification Executive Decisioning Today s operator executives view good customer experience as a key business success factor. Some are using their Big Data activities to build customer experience based KPIs (key performance indicators), and these management activities often require deeper insight about business indicators such as service quality, network performance, traffic patterns and applications in use, and subscriber behaviors so that executives can better grasp how well their services are meeting their customers needs. Correlating this information with specific subscriber experience insight provides a more comprehensive view of overall customer experience as well as bringing focus to the key factors that drive customer experience, so that executives can act in areas that have the greatest positive impact customer experience. Armed with high level management KPIs as well as the ability to identify areas that may need more or less investment, executives can more readily make appropriate decisions at both the strategic and operational levels. 4

5 SANDVINE S UNIQUE BENEFITS FOR BIG DATA INSIGHT Better visual analytical tools and cleaner integration Sandvine provides powerful, purpose built tools like ScoreCard, Engineering Insights, and LiveView to analyze network service delivery and investigate the many factors that can influence how well those services are delivered. In addition, data can be fed into data warehouse resources over an ODBC API or provided for real-time, Big Data enrichment over IPFix. Application awareness to deliver a higher quality of experience Sandvine s application intelligence delivers the industry s most comprehensive signatures database, providing over 2800 signatures that identify the vast majority of applications that traverse operator networks. This application and service information is critical for the delivery of high quality services that are important to customers. today and for the network planning required to support future applications and services. Greater return on operator investments and operational activities Operators need to understand how to best prioritize their investment and operational activities. To prioritize wisely, business leaders need to focus on improving those areas that yield the best outcomes for customers and the strongest results for the business. The Big Data Insight solution helps management make the right choices by pairing service quality metrics with the identification of those applications and services that are of the utmost importance to subscribers. Better business insight with more valuable network and subscriber inputs PacketLogic gleans highly granular information about critical business metrics such as network performance, traffic and application usage, and subscriber activity. These broader categories can be further analyzed by location, service tier, device in use, quality of services delivered, traffic route, peering link, applications and services accessed, and more. Operators use this deep network and subscriber intelligence to more closely monitor the state of their networks, to measure the quality of the services delivered to subscribers, and to make more informed business decisions. CONCLUSION Sandvine s Big Data Insights solution delivers better insight through standalone analytical tools or as an integrated data feed to operator Big Data systems. The solution is versatile addressing challenges that range from monitoring subscriber quality of experience, planning for future network investment, accelerating marketing success, and providing better, factbased information for more effective executive decisioning. Operators are looking for any edge that they can have to drive their businesses forward, and they are turning to Sandvine for rich and valuable network and subscriber insight. Contact your Sandvine sales representative to find out more about this solution and how it can help you transform your business. v ABOUT SANDVINE Sandvine helps organizations run world-class networks with Active Network, leveraging machine learning analytics and closed-loop automation to identify and adapt to network behavior in real-time. With Sandvine, organizations have the power of a highly automated platform from a single vendor that delivers a deep understanding of their network data to drive faster, better decisions. For more information, visit sandvine.com or follow Sandvine on Twitter USA Fremont Blvd, Fremont, CA 94538, USA T EUROPE Birger Svenssons Väg 28D Varberg, Sweden T. +46 (0) CANADA 408 Albert Street, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3V3, Canada T. +1 (0) ASIA Ardash Palm Retreat, Bellandur, Bangalore, Karnataka , India T Copyright Sandvine. All Networks. rights reserved. All rights All other reserved. trademarks All other are property trademarks of their are respective property of owners. their respective owners.