Sybase Analytics Keeps SMS Moving

For more on business intelligence, see Intelligent Enterprise.

Making the most of its own technology, Sybase this week announced Operator Analytics 365, a hosted service that uses the company's Sybase IQ analytic server to deliver deep insight into telecommunications network traffic levels, subscriber behavior and corresponding quality-of-service trends.

Offered by Sybase 365, the vendor's mobile messaging and mobile commerce services business, the Operator Analytics 365 service is aimed at more than 700 network customers, including popular service providers such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and Vodafone. These operators rely on Sybase 365 as an "interoperator" that exchanges SMS messages between networks. The company handles some 1.4 billion such messages per day around the globe. Operator Analytics 365 can crunch multiple terabytes of data generated each day by these exchanges.

The end product of the service is detailed insight into message origination, termination and myriad facets of performance, with detail down to specific locations and network switches. With timely insight, networks can better provision their networks, responding to spikes, tracking error messages and troubleshooting equipment problems.

"The operators are really concerned about meeting service-level commitments to corporate and individual customers," said Dan Lahl, Sybase senior director of product marketing, in an interview. "Our customers gave us detailed feedback on the reporting they wanted to see in the start-up dashboard, and they also can do ad-hoc analyses from a pick list of available data dimensions."

The service shows off the query performance of the Sybase IQ column-store database, which is used by more than 1,700 customers, including telcos, financial services firms, e-commerce firms and government agencies, to quickly explore huge volumes of data.

The Operator Analytics application itself is built on MicroStrategy business intelligence software, and it lets telcos customize their dashboard views.

"Customers can point and click to build their own bar charts, line charts, speedometers, thermometers -- however they want to visualize their data," Lahl said.

Customer data is securely partitioned within the Operator Analytics 365 service, according to Sybase, so competitors can't peek at a rival's data. The subscription-based service will be introduced in May, and the company says it expects to have 100 customers up and running by the end of June. Sybase declined to reveal exact pricing.