Databricks introduces Data Intelligence Platform

Databricks has launched the Data Intelligence Platform for Communications, a unified data and AI platform tailored for telecommunications carriers and network service providers. With the Data Intelligence Platform for Communications, Communication Service Providers (CSPs) benefit from a unified foundation for their data and AI, and can gain a holistic view of their networks, operations, and customer interactions without sacrificing data privacy or confidential IP. Built on an open lakehouse architecture, the Data Intelligence Platform for Communications combines industry-leading data management, governance, and data sharing with enterprise-ready generative AI and machine learning (ML) tools.

The Communications industry is undergoing one of the most significant periods of change in its history – marked by a dramatic increase in global traffic and a need for more network equipment, compounded by consumer demands for higher quality services and customer experiences (CX). Databricks created the Data Intelligence Platform for Communications to help organisations navigate these dynamics, empowering CSPs to better forecast market trends, predict demand patterns, monetise their data as a product, and democratise data insights to all employees, regardless of technical expertise. Early adopters of the Data Intelligence Platform include industry leaders like AT&T, which leverages the platform to protect its customers from fraud and increase operational efficiencies.

“At AT&T, data and AI are core to how we deploy, support, defend, and accelerate connectivity. With the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, we’re unifying data and AI to drive more innovation, enrich our products, and develop new capabilities for our customers,” said Andy Markus, Chief Data Officer at AT&T. “Combining the lakehouse architecture with generative AI also helps us democratise data and AI across our organisation while maintaining a ‘single source of truth.’ We’ve created an enterprise-wide environment in which tens of thousands of employees interact with AI tools to make data-driven decisions that better serve our customers.“

The Databricks Data Intelligence Platform for Communications makes it possible for CSPs to:

Use all types of data to improve CX and support: With Databricks, CSPs have a unified view of their customers’ data, including structured and unstructured data like images and video. With a real-time, accurate 360-degree view in place, CSPs can protect their customer relationships, reduce churn, and increase market share by delivering the personalised experiences customers expect.

Unified governance and compliance: CSPs can seamlessly govern all data types, ML models, notebooks, dashboards, and files on any cloud with Databricks Unity Catalog for enterprise governance.

Enable inexpensive and open collaboration: The Data Intelligence Platform for Communications leverages Delta Sharing to provide an open and secure method of data collaboration and sharing for companies, enabling CSPs to collaborate with their partners in real-time without requiring that all parties invest in the same expensive proprietary technology.

Pre-built data and AI solutions customised to tackle high-value industry use cases

Built on top of the Data Intelligence Platform, Databricks and its ecosystem of partners offer packaged solution accelerators to help organisations tackle the most common and high-value use cases in the industry. These include a number of communications-specific accelerators, such as:

Large Language Models (LLMs) for Customer Support: Elevate customer satisfaction with LLM-powered chatbots.

Telco Network Analytics: Increase network reliability for the 5G+ era and reduce customer churn with robust pipelines and accurate forecasting.

Geospatial Analytics to Identify Fraud: Analyse geospatial behaviours at scale to identify anomalous card transactions.

Customer Entity Resolution: Bring together data generated through transactions, support centre calls, and more to form a 360-degree view of customers.

“The need for a modern and unified data analytics and AI platform has never been greater. The Data Intelligence Platform for Communications was designed to meet the dynamic needs of customers at scale, while delivering enterprise-grade security and intelligently reducing costs to operate,” said Steve Sobel, Global Industry Leader for Communications, Media and Entertainment at Databricks. “It seamlessly creates avenues for CSPs to personalise, monetise, and innovate in the communications industry to decrease churn, improve service, and create new revenue streams with data they already have.”