Key data management priorities for telecoms in 2022

Ahead of Mobile World Congress 2022, our Director of Strategic Partnerships, Andy Leach, shared his thoughts on the key priorities for attendees, focusing on how a pragmatic, data-centric approach will future-proof the telecoms industry. This article first appeared in Vanilla Plus in February.

“It’s no secret that many telecoms organisations have a major focus on all things digital and 5G, as they aim to create a highly connected environment, offering customised rather than generic user experiences, with targeted personalised marketing,” he says. “To turn this vision into reality can present business and technology challenges. 5G, IoT and zero-touch digital experiences have one major element in common, data, more specifically growing volumes of data. Its increased availability across multiple platforms can help deliver real-time insights to drive business transformation and a competitive edge.”

“But it creates more urgency on delivery time to market, data availability, data quality, data platform scalability and data resiliency, and what about data sovereignty?” Leach adds. “Of course, you need to ensure that you have the correct levels of governance and controls in place.”

The main challenge is how to deliver all of this when you have a large number of legacy platforms with potential data integrity and data access concerns across the organisation. Leach asks: “Do you add another layer of complexity to an already overcomplicated and costly environment, by introducing something new? Do you take time to simplify your estate and implement fit for purpose solutions and smarter processes?”

These are difficult decisions to make, made even more problematic when many technology leaders face increasing pressure from business leaders to deliver more – faster and more cost-effectively. The scenario can create more short-term focused decisions, and less architected solutions, to deliver the here and now as firms overlook long-term cost impacts.

The opportunity for the industry is to focus on and truly understand the data, says Leach. “It’s easy to get caught up with technology, or even become too vendor led. After all, there are beautifully crafted utopian pictures of what products promise to deliver, yet they mask the challenging integration journey you need to take the physical data on, to ensure it’s of quality and the platform is cost effective. There is no silver bullet, but a pragmatic approach, with data at its core, will future proof the business for 2022 and beyond.”