LIVE FROM COMMUNICASIA 2013: Operators looking to exploit the data at their disposal to drive new business opportunites need to start by defining their target use cases, rather than getting caught up with the enabling technologies at their disposal, HP’s Miquel Carrero advised here at CommunicAsia yesterday.

“Anybody who normally talks about big data, about big data analytics, my humble piece advice is don’t buy their platform. Buy a use case. Find the use case of what you want to do, and that will catalyse which technology companies you need to use” he advised.

“Otherwise, you can spend a lot of money with companies like HP — and we’ll take it — but it will not meet the business objectives you have. You start with the use case, and then there are technologies to address the issues,” Carrero warned.

“You need to collect the data, you need to crunch the data, to make it meaningful information, and you need to do something about it,” he said.

The executive noted that operators can use the data at their disposal to boost their businesses by offering consumers personalised offerings and to support new business models, in the latter case by working with ecosystem partners to enhance the services on offer to customers.

This can be used to addressed issues facing telecoms operators related to profitability, which have dogged the industry for many years — and which continue to do so.

“The mindshare of the end customer is moving away from the telecommunications service provider. And with that mind share, the profit is moving as well. A lot of economic growth is being generated in this ecosystem, and the telco is part of it, but that profit is moving away from the telecoms industry in some form or fashion”, he said.

“There is nothing more in demand than the telecommunication connection…the goods that these companies are selling is in high demand, but the profit is going down,” he continued.

As has been a theme at the event, privacy issues related to the use of consumer data was deemed the “big issue”, although Carrero noted that this can be overcome if there are clear benefits to consumers.

“Privacy can be addressed. I guarantee that. There are three or four ways you can do it. You can shield completely the identity of the user, you can gather the information of several people by segments, you can do opt-in/opt-out, there are different technical ways to address privacy”, he noted.

“But if I recieve the right offer at the right price at the right time, I’m happy.”