Operator Perspective: Dealing with Issues & Relationships in a changing eco-system

1. www.oasis-open.org Operator Perspective: Dealingwith Issues & Relationships in a changing eco-system Edin BektesevicSenior Technology StrategistVodafone Group Servicesedin.bektesevic@vodafone.com

2. www.oasis-open.org Overview • Background • WS, REST, mash-ups? • Why is user data important? • What user data? • An illustrative case at point – mobile advertising

3. www.oasis-open.org Background • A lot of talk and promise when it comes to new integration technologies and concepts in the Telecom world • It is all good, but… How mature are they? How much consideration do they take to real world, practical problems? • The landscape is continuously changing

4. www.oasis-open.org WS, REST, mash-ups? • No more acronyms and buzzwords, please!  • WS – made to ease the integration, but is it sufficient? • REST, the usual Telecom world concerns • Mash-ups, how realistic is it?

5. www.oasis-open.org User data, why is it important? • In the world of different kinds of spam, service penetration, reach and efficiency is key! • Personalisation hence becomes crucial in addressing the ordinary people’s needs • The grade of amount and quality varies a lot across the industry

6. www.oasis-open.org User data, a classic telecom perspective • The modern mobile telecoms is built upon the authentication – the tie between the GSM and the SIM is clear • Historically seen as more of a liability, rather than an asset • Legal responsibility • Customer relations • Cost/fraud…

7. www.oasis-open.org User data, a contemporary telecom perspective • Clearly an asset! • Main advantages: • Billing relationship, enabling digital and physical PoS payment • “Always on, always there” (location, presence, etc) • User behaviour and history knowledge • Mobile is well and broadly accepted, providing for a well established, solid communications platform • However, the “pre-paid”/”post-paid” usually normally tipped towards the former, meaning less data, of lesser quality. Improving though, through marketing initiatives

8. www.oasis-open.org What user data? • Of course, still to be shared and used responsibly – presents new challenges • Kinds of user data: • The basic (name, age, address…) • The financially relevant (bank account or credit card number…) • The profiling (age group, gender, interests, previous history…) • However, operators more and more prone to share and use anonymous and general profile data, describing the user as someone belonging to a category

9. www.oasis-open.org Why this approach? • The responsibility towards the law and the customer still there • Contracts not sufficient, as they can be costly and practically difficult to enforce • More and more business scenarios demographics category orientated, i.e. personalisation becoming a crucial bit of more and more online services • Ensures a degree of anonimity, as well as helps the operator maintain their role as “data owners”

10. www.oasis-open.org A case at point – mobile advertising • “Hot” in the mobile operator community • Promise of significant, new cash flows • A good case of services where personalisation is crucial, as to improve targetting and facilitate better user response • A growing market • Aligned with the multi-service market tendencies

11. User device User device User device User device User device User device User device User device User device AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine AdEngine Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application Ad-consuming application www.oasis-open.org Mobile advertising infrastructure Mobile advertising server Mobile advertising network application Mobile advertising network application Mobile advertising network application User and demographics databases

12. www.oasis-open.org Mobile advertising information flows • The mobile advertising server serves personalised ads to a number of user devices, plus network applications embedding ad content (e.g. WAP portals, SMSCs, etc) • The server personalised relevant ads based on the user information (targetting category) and send them to different users’ AdEngines or different network applications • The result is quality-wise very sensitive to the amount and quality of data that the operator possesses, hence building the data stores is key

13. www.oasis-open.org Conclusions • User information and personalisation increasingly important – now an asset, rather than a liability • The challenges are growing as well, though – more players (“partners”), more complexity • Metaidentifiers > metadata • Demographics categories > user attributes • Building up user data stores as important as actually using them