Overview

p class="SubHead1"United Group is the leading multi-play telecoms and media provider in South East Europe, providing customers with a full range of telecommunications services. With over 4,500 employees, its annual revenue exceeds €740 million./p pUnited Group’s companies have established a reputation for providing the highest quality content and services in their respective markets. With unmatched cable and DTH (Direct To Home) reach across the region, and internationally targeted media services, United Group’s companies are able to provide content across all devices and formats, and deliver fast broadband and inexpensive voice calls. Their acquisition strategy has fueled growth and the company has doubled in size in recent years./p

Supernova Award Category

Data to Decisions

The Problem

pChallenge: Support data-driven operations and new service initiatives with an enterprise-level data analytics platform that scales with rapid company growth./p pWith growth come new challenges, as Andrija Derežić, CIO for United Group, explains: “We add new companies, data sources, and subject areas all the time. When our existing analytics platform, Netezza, was declared end-of-life by the vendor, but our user number and data queries kept on rising, we realized we needed a new scalable solution. We looked for an enterprise-level platform that would give us the best value for money, while boosting our performance for complex queries and data mining.”/p pUnited Group was already a data-driven organization, focused on analysing its KPIs, customer needs, and making data-driven business decisions. Vertica has taken this a step further with fully integrated data-driven operational process execution./p p class="Default"In collaboration with local implementation partner Poslovna Inteligencija (PI) and after researching the market, United Group made the decision for Vertica. /p

The Solution

pWith over 15TB of data to manage, performance was a major consideration in choosing Vertica. The first priority was to migrate data analytics from the existing platform by creating a mirror Vertica system. By running parallel systems for a few months, the organization ensured that data and results could be compared and tested under the exact same conditions. United Group’s analytical architecture is standardized to make new company acquisitions easier to integrate. All divisions run the same SAP-centred solution, from which data flows into an Informatica Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) environment. Here, the SAP data is combined with other data sources and fed into Vertica for pushdown transformation. Customer, operational, financial, and service-quality data is analysed in Vertica and used as the basis for Tableau reporting and data-driven processes. "Scalability, performance, and rapid roll-out of new services are key to success in this competitive industry."/p

The results

p class="Default"Derežić was pleased to note some quick results: “Our nightly ETL run used to take 100 minutes in the old environment. With Vertica, the same query would run in just 24 minutes, so more than four times faster. On average, query speed has doubled. It made us realise Vertica has a key role to play in other United Group use cases too.”/p p class="Default"Recently, United Group launched its Video Dynamic Advertising (VIDA) platform. This revolutionary application provides addressable TV advertising. It delivers a personal block of ads based on each customer’s interests. VIDA combines click stream data about channel changes with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to identify the customer’s preferred programs and what they’re currently watching. United Group’s streaming platform, EON, knows what device the customer uses to watch as well, and this will also influence the choice of ads. Vertica combines 50+ customer and device profile attributes, such as geography, demographics, customer value, and sport and lifestyle interests, with information about the particular program and device to train profiling algorithms. These are used to make near real-time decisions on how to fill an upcoming advertising block. /p p class="Default""We can offer ads to a very specific, or regional, target audience. Vertica’s machine learning power really comes into its own here, as it ingests data from live broadcasts and responds immediately with customized ad suggestions.”/p

Metrics

pDerežić was pleased to note some quick results: “Our nightly ETL run used to take 100 minutes in the old environment. With Vertica, the same query would run in just 24 minutes, so more than four times faster. On average, query speed has doubled. It made us realise Vertica has a key role to play in other United Group use cases too.”/p ul li4X query speed improvement on comparable hardware/li liUnrivaled scalability and performance for growing company/li liMachine learning boosts addressable advertising/li li360 degree customer dashboard enhances customer service/li /ul pUnited Group was already a data-driven organization, focused on analysing its KPIs, customer needs, and making data-driven business decisions. Vertica has taken this a step further with fully integrated data-driven operational process execution./p p class="BodyText"“We feel confident that Vertica can support our future growth, as we integrate more companies into the United Group. We will continue to gather more data and enhance our algorithms leveraging Vertica’s advanced machine learning to give our customers the best possible user experience.”/p

The Technology

pFueled by ever-growing volumes of Big Data found in many corporations and government agencies, the Vertica Analytics Platform is a SQL analytics solution built from the ground up to handle massive volumes of data and delivers blazing fast Big Data analytics. The platform is available in the broadest range of deployment and consumption models, including on premise, on Hadoop, and in the clouds./p

Disruptive Factor

p class="Default"Recently, United Group launched its Video Dynamic Advertising (VIDA) platform. This revolutionary application provides addressable TV advertising. It delivers a personal block of ads based on each customer’s interests. VIDA combines click stream data about channel changes with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) to identify the customer’s preferred programs and what they’re currently watching. United Group’s streaming platform, EON, knows what device the customer uses to watch as well, and this will also influence the choice of ads. Vertica combines 50+ customer and device profile attributes, such as geography, demographics, customer value, and sport and lifestyle interests, with information about the particular program and device to train profiling algorithms. These are used to make near real-time decisions on how to fill an upcoming advertising block./p p class="Default"Derežić explains the value this offers to advertisers: “This unique offering enables such specific segmentation that even small and medium companies can benefit from advertising on a national channel, as we can offer their ads to a very specific, or regional, target audience. Vertica’s machine learning power really comes into its own here, as it ingests data from live broadcasts and responds immediately with customized ad suggestions.”/p

Shining Moment

p class="Default"Big data practices are critical for understanding UG's expanding customer base; scalability, performance, and fast rollouts of solutions are imperatives for their operations within the burgeoning and competitive telco industry./p p After five years on the Netezza platform, United Group decided in 2019 to migrate to Vertica for its scalability, powerful features, and value compared to alternative platforms./p