Author | Fu Yiping

Source | Walking with Data

Recently, China Mobile put forward its DICT strategy, showing its ambition to further expand in the government and enterprise market, and against this backdrop, it makes sense to revisit the big data realization of operators. Although the "big data circle" seems to be in a bit of a frenzy in the last six months, it has had little impact on the legally compliant big data businesses.

The following author combined with their own practice, giving the next 2-3 years, operators of big data value realization of the ten trend judgment, only on behalf of personal opinion, I hope you have some enlightenment.

1, industry service boundaries continue to expand

Relying on the operator's huge potential for data resources and government and enterprise market channel resources, after years of market cultivation and expansion, the current operator big data business from the original financial, tourism and other industries gradually expanding to the government, tourism, transportation, education, business, recruitment, health care and other industries.

Operators ICT business in the promotion, but also bred a lot of big data business opportunities, big data business is in turn to promote the development of ICT business, because big data in addition to the business value, there is a certain social branding effect, the two through the integration of synergies can be formed.

With the acceleration of the digital transformation of enterprises and the rise of the industrial Internet, big data, as the future infrastructure of society, will open up new frontiers in the industry, along with cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain, and the boundaries of its application are almost unlimited.

2, into the deep water of industry applications

Big data in the industry has a huge potential does not mean that operators will be able to share much of the pie. Although operators of big data business in the financial, tourism and other industries have made gains, but the low-hanging fruit of these industries is basically to be picked up.

Taking finance as an example, 4-5 years ago, operators cut into the verification of the real, lost contact and other business, is still the main operator of big data realization, but the financial industry is not as operators originally expected, in the pre-credit, credit, loan, after the operator to give more opportunities, the operator of the expansion of many realizing business model is basically stagnant, at least not fast enough.

In a large number of other industry segments, carriers are often only able to do a slapdash job, rather than being able to gather sand to form a tower, such as the low rate of business repurchase.

From a qualitative point of view, the operators' understanding of the industry is still relatively shallow, and a large number of their industry applications wander outside the core production process of the enterprise, and big data seems to be a luxury rather than a necessity, so the stickiness is not enough.

Taking the business of financial verification as an example, its added value is not high and easily replaced, think about how much the understanding of the financial industry has increased in the past few years. These are places that need to be reflected upon.

The author once mentioned in an article related to intelligent transportation: the operator's data in many areas is in fact very promising, but it must be deep plowing, to understand the business of this industry, know the algorithms of this industry, and constantly polished products, so as to approach the core.

It can be said that the operator big data will soon enter the deep water of the industry application, in order to comply with this trend, the operator needs to establish a specialized organization to overcome the difficulties, the challenge is great.

3, with the Internet company's competition intensified

Internet should not have the operator as the main big data competitors, but the operator to enter the field will form a de facto competition with the Internet company, whether it is a new retail, intelligent transportation and so on, the entrants will feel the pressure of the Internet giants.

For example, operators want to provide data services for large supermarkets, but the Internet company has long been the first to enter the new retail is the Internet out of the concept, when the operators are still in the difficult transformation of their own channels, the Internet company's offline business map has been planned, of course, also includes the big data business. You go to the superstore to talk, people open their mouths to mention XX pass how how.

Of course it's not just that.

Whether it's the top-down promotional strategy of Internet companies on To G, and the dominance of, say, City Brain as a single source of procurement, it all speaks to the influence of giant Internet companies in these areas.

Operators have to use all the resources available to them to gain access, to leverage the differentiated value of their own data, and to look for opportunities from point to point. The value of pipeline data has proven to be huge, but giant Internet companies are also getting better and better, which is a reality that has to be faced.

4, from element-driven to element + capability-driven transformation

Operators current breakthroughs in big data realization can only be said to pick the low-hanging fruit, but the competitiveness of such data products formed through simple data processing is not enough, and is also unsustainable.

For example, to do intelligent transportation, if the location accuracy and coverage is not enough, even the speed can not be measured, simply can not do high-quality data products.

It should be said that operators have never had ready-made, high-precision, user-level location data, coarse accuracy of the original location data in the future may not even be enough to support the transformation of the operator's own business, operators need to fully tap the potential of the existing location data, through modeling and other ways to make a more accurate location model, in order to have a basic big data realization of the underlying.

The improvement of location accuracy is a small step, but it's a big step for external big data realization. If the location is accurate, the operator's understanding of people's entire offline life will be accurate, whether it is passenger flow, road network, OD and so on.

Now operators rely on data resources as an element to get out of the first step is good, but just rely on resource-driven is not enough, the ability to must come over to take over the baton, there is no ability to support the operator's big data realization prospects are dim.

Therefore, the operator big data realization in the future is no longer lying to earn money, but from the original data drive to the data + ability to double-drive transformation, the ability to include talent, technology, data, products, operations and so on, this is indisputable. But if you just empty shouting slogans do not dare to explore and try, then perhaps even the ability to improve the opportunity are not.

5, continue to strengthen the ecology of big data cooperation

Big data realization from the bottom up involves a series of platforms, data, modeling, products, programs, channels, consulting, operations, security, etc., the operator can not do it all, and therefore must establish a cooperative ecology.

From a business perspective, the lack of channel partners, the lack of industry solutions for operators are very real challenges, the biggest pain than not knowing where the business opportunities are, do not know they want to do this data or product has no future. Operators can not instantly turn the existing account manager team into a digital product sales force, after all, the knowledge structure of the requirements are not the same.

While it is possible to move forward with an MVP approach, on the one hand, the cost of trial and error is there, and carriers don't have the capital to back it up, and on the other hand, the time cost is a bit bigger. Many operators now have partner recruitment programs, which is a good attempt, but there are still too few partners who meet the requirements.

From the perspective of openness, China Mobile's dream network has created a brilliant, but the slogan of openness is not just shouting, you have to establish a set of standards, clearly tell others what you have the ability to do, and then how you can easily access.

For example, when we showed CityLab products at the Internet conference, we found that so many people were still surprised that operators could still do this, which means we still have a long way to go on the road to openness.

And when I first visited the AliCloud website, its better experience left a deep impression on me, followed by regular marketing push at least shows that it is attentive, and for example, I first used the Tencent cloud domain name application, followed by Tencent cloud customer service phone research is also very timely.

So, the ability to establish a connection with a wider range of partners, the ability to establish an open platform, and the ability to ensure the safety of the information, to a large extent, determines the operator's big data realization of the cake can be made how big.

6, through the centralization of the trend will strengthen the ability to obtain a premium

Because of the historical reasons of the operator's big data is actually stored and operated in the provinces, which is completely different from the Internet company's natural centralized and unified data gene. Although some operators have made a lot of efforts in centralization, there are still some gaps relative to Internet companies.

The localization of each province to do some of the products, although it brings flexibility, but caused a de facto duplication of development, this model in the innovation stage is actually not a problem, but the biggest problem is whether the provinces can have enough resources to ensure that the products continue to be optimized, whether from the point of view of the data, or from the point of view of the operation, we need a certain degree of centralization mechanism to ensure efficient and low-cost operation.

But that's only one aspect.

On the other hand, compared to the Internet, due to the fragmentation of data, operators based on the data of a single province to make the product premium ability is not high, often can only serve a specific region, in many of the competition will be at a disadvantage, for example, the current operators based on the location of a lot of applications of data, but why the realization of Internet access data is very little?

This is not just a simple https issue, but also because the customer's demand for Internet access data is basically nationwide, without the concept of geography, which makes operators lose a lot of opportunities to break through.

So, the operator's big data in a province after the innovation of rapid network-wide replication is always to adhere to the strategy, and innovation based on centralized data is to enhance the competitiveness of the product is a key.

7, the operator DICT strategy will make big data to get greater support

With the development of the digital economy and the progress of industry digitization, the demand for transformation and upgrading of traditional industries is strong, carriers and cloud service providers, are strengthening the cloud, network, end, edge synergistic, the launch of the "cloud + network + DICT

Carriers and cloud service providers are strengthening cloud, network, terminal and edge synergies and launching "cloud+net+DICT" intelligent solutions to help enterprises realize deeper digital transformation.

The operator's government and enterprise 2B market is the current focus of attention, and cloud + DICT (DT + CT + ICT + IDC) is the key to this, which means that a variety of resources in the future will gradually will be tilted to the DICT, the big data need to seize this opportunity to promote the large-scale development of big data business through the integration of the DICT, the so-called " take advantage of the situation".

In addition, the current three major carriers have announced 5G commercialization, China Mobile has also released the "5G +" plan, including "5G + AICDE" program, "5G + AICDE" is the use of 5G as a platform to promote the development of big data services, so-called "leverage". "5G+AICDE" is to use 5G as an access method, and artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing (Cloud Computing), Big Data, edge computing (Edge Computing) and other emerging information technology in-depth fusion, ready to build a 5G-centered pan-intelligent infrastructure.

There will be more types of data generated by connections between people and things, and between things and things in the 5G era; denser base station deployment for 5G means higher positioning accuracy; more diverse forms of 5G services mean that the data content in the pipeline will increase explosively; the ability of operators to carve out customer behaviors will be further strengthened; and every vertical 5G industry application will be inextricably linked to big data. relationship, these are favorable for the development of operational big data.

8, increasingly tight data security requirements for operators is both a challenge and an opportunity

Operators have a huge amount of data, but many provincial companies have not substantially carry out the big data business, many of which are based on security considerations. Even for the operator provinces that are carrying out the business of realizing big data, compliance and legal operation is the bottom line of their big data business, and the operators are relatively conservative about the business innovation of big data.

In fact, the various new big data businesses that carriers can currently carry out need to go through extremely strict internal legal and security multi-channel audits, coupled with the constraints of various security management norms issued by the industry, groups and provinces, as well as regular security inspections, which have made the carriers' big data businesses go through internal rounds of security baptisms from the moment they are born.

The various information security incidents that continue to ferment in 2019 make the big data circle seem to be on thin ice, but its fight is still against all kinds of illegal operations and black market transactions. In fact, after a new round of washout, operators may face a better business environment than before, and data may become more scarce, after all, the former black market data trading will lead to the phenomenon of good money driving out bad money, which is of course just a speculation.

What is certain is that the future tightening of national control over information security will make the innovation of big data business more challenging, but complying with the legal value of big data mining, to help China's high-quality development of the economy has always been the mainstream, the operators, although they will face security challenges, but there are also more opportunities.

9, operators big data for TO C business exploration will not stop

Internet companies TO C business is relying on money to burn out in the early stages, after all, consumers are profit-oriented, with a high experience of the product and a certain base of users, the Internet company has a precious mass of data, this time big data have a place to use, and in turn, to empower the development of the business, which is the essence of the application of big data, the Internet company. This is the essence of the company's application of big data.

Operators naturally have big data, but the practice of realizing big data still tells us that the operator's data dimension is still not rich enough, such as the lack of consumer data, and giant Internet companies through the richness of the application continues to accumulate more dimensions of data.

In fact, the current data dimension expansion of operators is basically stagnant, if not improved, in the near future, the data advantage of operators will gradually become smaller, which will ultimately affect the competitiveness of products.

Now carriers have established many professional companies, such as China Mobile's Migu, some people may question whether these companies can make money, let's not think about this issue from a strategic point of view, even if we stand in the perspective of big data, the expansion of these companies can allow operators to have richer data, which is very valuable. Recently, China Mobile Jinke was established, payment data for DT how important need not be explained, so the significance is very far-reaching.

In fact, if you are doing big data products, which one of you doesn't have some TO C dreams? I hope that operators can be based on their own resource advantages, combined with the differentiated characteristics of big data, can create a real both sold and good TO C products.

10, the operator for the low value density of big data processing capacity requirements will be significantly increased

Operators DPI data has typical big data characteristics, potential but low value density, but this data is the operator in addition to the location of the data of the most valuable data, a lot of people say that this data in the operator to realize the actual application of the scene, or words must be said https, that is a more amateurish way of saying. That's a rather amateurish way of putting it.

With the advent of the 5G era, the effective mining of DPI data is one of the core foundations for operators to realize big data.

First of all, DPI is a technology natively designed for network optimization, for example, many fields are not valuable for data realization, can we consider more cost-effective means of processing? This requires operators to target research, such as customer insights, precision marketing and value realization perspective to efficiently and cost-effectively collect data in the pipeline.

Secondly, the characteristics of 5G massive, low-latency, unstructured data will further promote the advancement of data storage, processing and analysis technology. Even with the current 4G, the latency from collection to application is relatively high, making it difficult to meet the requirements of scenario-based marketing, and the retention period is also very limited.

Finally, the value density of 5G big data will be further reduced, the ability of AI will be more demanding, even for the current 4G data, the operator's NLP and other capacity reserves are not enough, so it is necessary to make up for the short board as soon as possible.

Of course, the above ten trends are just the author's personal judgment, limited by their own ability and vision, the above talk is certainly a lot out of place, as the author of the right to throw a brick to attract jade, if it can trigger a little thinking, it would be better.