There is no doubt that data has become the new currency for service providers. However, data lakes are already becoming flooded with so much data that they can be unusable and there is no indication that this trend will slow or stop. As Alan Carlton points out in his article on Big Data and 5G, “The 5G standards community is already planning to support the collection and transmission of massive amounts of data.”
The challenge, as Carlton points out, is “Big Data, of course, refers to data sets that are so large and complex that traditional database systems cannot handle them. Big Data also encompasses the techniques for data acquisition, storage, processing, analysis, querying and visualization. Basically, the ability to digest vast amounts of unstructured data in an automated fashion to derive useful insights and to drive automated feedback actions.”
“IoT will be a key part of 5G, and how this unstructured data is used will be an important part of that story. Think, billions of sensors sending back all types of data (including video) to the network. The opportunity here is to use this data to improve the operation of the network itself, or to help the key new applications that will emerge in 5G work better,” adds Carlton.
This brings the need for Smart Data that is more intelligent, efficient, scalable, and available in near real time. Service providers need Big Data to be accessible, usable, and extensible to a variety of use cases including network orchestration and optimization, business insights, IoT device behavior, user experience, and more.
Whether it's for 5G, IoT, or existing 3G/4G networks, service providers need Smart Data in their Big Data. Smart Data leads to Smart Analytics.
~ Mike Serrano, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, NETSCOUT