A big problem among telecom companies today is churn, subscribers who leave a particular service provider and move to another. Understanding why customers leave and how to reduce churn is a major goal for any firm in the telecom space. And that’s why a recently announced partnership between IBM Corp. and Hortonworks Inc. is raising hopes that a solution may finally be at hand.

“They want to know when the calls are dropping, why are they dropping, why are the clients going to the competition. There’s so much data,” said Madhu Kochar (pictured, right), vice president of analytics product development and client success, private cloud, at IBM.

Kochar, who was joined by Jamie Engesser (pictured, left), senior vice president of product management at Hortonworks, visited theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and answered questions from hosts Lisa Martin (@Luccazara) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41) during DataWorks Summit in San Jose, California. They discussed ways to solve the churn issue for telecom firms and how Big SQL — a SQL engine for Hadoop, an open-source-based software used for storing, processing and analyzing big data — is generating interest among clients in the Hadoop community. (* Disclosure below.)

Combined analytics and data management will have impact

The partnership announced at DataWorks 17 gives users of the Hortonworks Data Platform access to IBM’s capabilities in machine learning and advanced analytics. Using data science to build an analytical model and then combining it with a solid dataflow management platform will give telcos what they need to precisely breakdown and track every step that could lead to customer churn, according to Engesser.

“You need to marry those two,” he said.

Engesser also believes that cluster management tools in the open-source community, such as TensorFlow, Jupyter and Zeppelin, will also help the telco cause. With the announced partnership “we get a better federation model to allow our customers to access more of the data and make better business decisions,” Engesser said.

New solution bundles are also being created to integrate IBM Big SQL with HDP. “Big SQL is already working really well on the Hortonworks platform,” Kochar said. “In this type of partnership, our community is winning, and our clients.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of DataWorks Summit. (* Disclosure: IBM sponsored this DataWorks Summit segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE