NetworkIP speeds call detail analysis with Vertica Analytic Database

Prepaid calling services provider enables customers to analyze billions of call detail records in seconds to help them boost calling plan profitability

ANDOVER, Mass. — Telecom services provider NetworkIP is using the Vertica® Analytic Database to supercharge a key business offering for its customers, enabling them to query nearly ten times more call detail record (CDR) data more than 200 times faster than before, Vertica Systems announced. This performance boost is helping customers make better business decisions through analysis of CDRs and is enabling NetworkIP to differentiate and grow in a very competitive marketplace.

Texas-based NetworkIP lets a broad range of customers, including telcos and distributors, offer branded telephone calling cards, audio conferencing and other prepaid services. To help these customers optimize calling plan rates, analyze plan usage patterns and monitor profitability of their services, the company built a Web-based data mining solution that allowed customers to analyze up to 90 days of summarized call data, which was stored in a MySQL-based data warehouse. As the data mining tools grew in popularity, customers demanded access to years of call detail history - billions of records, each with 200 pieces of information - for trend analysis, and to see call data within minutes of the calls, not the day after, so they could make intra-day changes to their calling plans and measure the impact on profitability.

Revolutionizing Customer Service
To meet these customer demands, NetworkIP needed a new CDR data warehouse database. Switching to the column-oriented Vertica Analytic Database - with its ground-breaking query performance, aggressive data compression and real-time loading and querying - has enabled NetworkIP customers to analyze up to two years of CDRs at any level, not just summarized data, within minutes of calls being made. Internally, Vertica has enabled NetworkIP to slash the time to conduct a critical monthly cost analysis of 800 number traffic from 12 hours to less than 10 seconds.

"Our customers were only able to focus on what happened last week and last month. Today, they also want to look at things that happened over the last 24 months--or over the last 2 hours," said Stephan Broquie, director of business development applications at NetworkIP. "Vertica has helped us revolutionize data mining because it can query 10 times more data 200 times faster than our former database and its unique ability to trickle load data on a 24x7 basis lets customers quickly evaluate the affects of calling plan changes and re-adjust them accordingly several times per day."

NetworkIP also reduces hardware and administrative costs with the Vertica Analytic Database, which can store dozens of terabytes of data in one-tenth the space of traditional row-store databases and can scale affordably as NetworkIP grows. Broquie estimates that Vertica's architecture and automated administration functions will help the company re-direct database administrator resources to other critical operations.

The Vertica Analytic Database will also open new doors for NetworkIP and its customers, enabling more customized analyses that will drive profit. One potential new reporting capability would support a loyalty program tracker that would identify frequent buyers of calling cards by tying incoming phone numbers to calling card numbers and then tracking purchase volume and usage over time.

"The ability to iteratively fine-tune calling plans and other marketing programs based on analysis of more history, more detail and more real-time data allows companies to capitalize on new market opportunities faster than competitors," added Vertica CEO Ralph Breslauer. "More and more companies are moving outsourced marketing analytics to the Vertica Analytic Database to enable new views of business performance that maximize profitability and retain customers."

About NetworkIP
NetworkIP is changing the way businesses and people grow and enhance their connections. Since 1998, the company has delivered patented and best-in-class telephony and stored value technologies, systems, and integrated services that ensure reliability, minimize complexity, and increase profitability. A privately held company and a leading provider of telephony and stored value solutions, NetworkIP sets industry standards for quality, integrity and functionality. For more information on how to enhance your valued connections, please visit: www.NetworkIP.net.

About Vertica
Vertica Systems is the market innovator for high-performance analytic database management systems that run on industry-standard hardware. Co-founded by database pioneer Dr. Michael Stonebraker, Vertica has developed grid-based, column-oriented analytic database technology that lets companies of any size store and query very large databases orders of magnitude faster and more affordably than other solutions. The Vertica Analytic Database’s unmatched speed, scalability, flexibility and ease of use helps customers like JP Morgan Chase, Verizon, Comcast, Level 3 Communications and Vonage capitalize on business opportunities in real time. Vertica is headquartered in Andover, Mass. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.vertica.com.