IBM today announced its intent to acquire Dublin-based The Now Factory, a privately held big data analytics company serving communications service providers (CSPs). The announcement comes days after its joint announcement with Deutsche Telekom of their collaboration to provide the IBM MobileFirst platform in the cloud to European SMB customers and a week after IBM’s acquisition of Daeja Image Systems Ltd, another Big Data analytics company.

The acquisition enhances IBM’s Big Data Platform with a new class of analytics solutions. The Now Factory focuses on data analytics designed to help CSPs improve customer service and better manage negative experiences and network outages. CSPs from more than 29 countries with a total of more than 500 million customers use its technology and solutions.

Major Growth

 
CSPs are experiencing explosive growth in customer data demand. Analyst and research firm Informa Telecoms and Media predicts that by 2016 mobile phone subscribers will use 8X the video, 10X the gaming data, and 8X the social media and music media as they do today. This high growth strains CSP networks worldwide.

The Now Factory’s software provides CSPs with real-time insights into customer needs by analyzing massive quantities of network and business data, allowing them to enhance quality of service for customers and plan more effectively to meet demand growth. It also helps CSPs better understand how subscribers interact with cloud-based services such as mobile applications. For instance it can analyze customer use of 3G and 4G LTE data services and identify high volume pre-paid subscribers. This can become the basis for targeted campaigns to convert high volume pre-paid subscribers into post-paid accounts.

The acquisition allows The Now Factory to extend its technologies to reach a broader client base and help them to uncover untapped growth opportunities and achieve tangible business value from big data and analytics, said Tom Morrisroe, CEO, The Now Factory. For example, IBM InfoSphere Streams augments its data mediation and analytics and extends the range of use to include more real-time analytics on data in motion.