How Fast Data Can Help Telcos Virtualize, Monetize, and Deal with the Data Deluge
Author: Ciara Byrne
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Printed in the United States of America.
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Fast Data Use Cases for Telecommunications
Big data is data at rest. Fast data is data in motion: a relentless stream of events generated by humans and machines that must be analyzed and acted upon in real time. Data is fast before it becomes big through export to a long-term data store.
Fast data applications must ingest vast amounts of streaming data while maintaining real-time analytics and making instant decisions on the live data stream. A fast data application in a telco might enforce policies, make personalized real-time offers to subscribers, allocate network resources, or order predictive maintenance based on Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data.
This ebook covers not only why telcos need fast data but also the technical characteristics of several telco-specific fast data use cases and examples of real-life deployments. VoltDB is an in-memory, NewSQL database that became popular with telcos for its ability to handle the speed and scale of fast data. This ebook reflects the expe‐ riences of VoltDB engineers and customers who have deployed mul‐ tiple telco fast data use cases.
“Telecom is really hard,” says Michael Pogany, head of business development in VoltDB’s Telecom Solutions Group. “Telecom is unique. Our telecom clients are the most demanding and the most visionary of our customers.”
Why Telcos Need Fast Data
Telco networks have always generated fast data at line speed. In telco use cases like policy management, decisions are already made on that data in near real-time. In many other cases, network and cus‐ tomer data is backhauled into a data lake and analyzed over hours or days to gain insight into the subscriber experience or the quality of the network.
Two fundamental changes will bring fast data systems to the fore‐ front at every telco operator: a massive increase in the volume of streaming-data service providers need to process, and the need to act on that data in milliseconds.
“Real time is making decisions on the data within milliseconds of the event happening,” says Pogany. “There are elements of the Telecom network that operate that fast, but now the entire network and all of the systems supporting it are going to have to operate that fast.”
Fast data applications will operate the agile, automated, virtualized network infrastructure created by Network functions virtualization (NFV), Software-defined networking (SDN) and eventually 5G. Fast data will enable telecom service providers to personalize services and deploy new ones like IoT to boost declining revenues. Fast data is the future of telco.
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- Why telcos need fast data
- 4 functions of a fast data system
- Building a fast data stack for telco
- Technical characteristics of various telco-specific fast data use cases
- Examples of real-life deployments
Sponsored by VoltDB