It’s amazing how expansion in one area of technology can have an effect on so many other areas.
That’s one finding from Infonetics Research’s (News - Alert) newest report, which shows that the worldwide subscriber data management (SDM) market grew 29 percent in 2014 from 2013, to $1.4 billion. The study shows the growth was fueled in part by operator demand for voice over LTE (News - Alert) (VoLTE) and subscriber analytics.
"Voice over LTE is continuing to drive SDM spending in developed markets as operators look to manage their subscriber data over multiple network domains,” said Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics. “We expect the adoption of voice over Wi-Fi to have a similar effect.”
The findings confirm that those deploying VoLTE are headed in the right direction, as more and more subscribers want to take advantage of technology advances.
Infonetics notes that operators are looking to deploy subscriber data management (SDM) as a centralized subscriber data repository that can be integrated with multiple front-end applications potentially from multiple vendors. “The cost savings and operational efficiencies associated with reducing the number of subscriber data repositories remains a major factor behind SDM spending, particularly in emerging markets facing rapid subscriber growth,” the research giant said in a statement.
Still, it’s not all never-ending profits.
“Despite growing interest in SDM, barriers to adoption remain, including interoperability concerns, subscriber data sensitivity and organizational silos,” Infonetics observed. “Virtualization of front-end applications such as home subscriber server, and policy and charging rules function, are well underway, and virtualization of the backend SDM platform is following suit, but concerns about reliability, availability and security persist.”
The report concludes in part that as SDM evolves to an independent backend solution that can enable emerging areas such as identity and analytics, it will create new opportunities for alternative vendors that may not have an entrenched presence in the HSS and home location register markets.
Edited by Dominick Sorrentino