How Verizon Achieves Operational Analytics at Scale

At the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2018 in Grapevine, Texas, MapD CEO Todd Mostak and Verizon Senior Manager of CDS VoLTE, Jason Sanders, led a thought-provoking session. They discussed how MapD customer Verizon leveraged MapD’s real-time capabilities to provide industry-leading network reliability.

Verizon’s Analytical Challenge

In 2015, Verizon was searching for innovative technologies to solve one of its biggest pain points — the inability to manage the extreme volume of data the Commercial Data Systems (CDS) team was processing. The CDS team works on authentication and entitlement for all Apple devices, which generates ten billion new rows of data every five days. The current architecture across multiple locations meant that the team had to cross-analyze and review data from over 32 logs to find information. In order to maintain industry-leading reliability, Verizon’s CDS team needs to analyze this data and detect anomalies. However, running a single report was taking the team up to twenty minutes. What Verizon needed was to provide their analysts with real-time analytics, enabling them to make informed, and fast, operational decisions. That’s when they found MapD.

MapD to the Rescue

After implementing MapD, Verizon was able to analyze data and troubleshoot much faster. And with MapD’s easy-to-use interface, the whole team was able to get involved. “A lot of our guys are not data-specific folks, they’re operational technicians. They might not have experience in SQL, or analytics in general. So having a front end that is very intuitive and easy to use really helps the adoption of it. Everyone wants to use it, and there isn’t a big learning curve that they have to go through,” Sanders said. To highlight how easy it is to navigate in MapD, Sanders described how one Verizon user, who had no prior experience with MapD, was able to log into Immerse, import a .csv file, and create dashboards, all within minutes.

“The amount of time that we save using the platform is really the key, whether for general reporting or using it in a real-time situation. Time is of the essence.”

- Jason Sanders, Senior Manager of CDS VoLTE, Verizon

If you missed the presentation, view the slides here.