Siloed work structures and lengthy software development processes are quickly being replaced by approaches like the Agile and DevOps models, and the dynamic workflows of these methodologies are spilling over into all facets of service providers' business models.

In order to keep pace with the exponential growth of IoT and virtualization, analytics teams are also moving away from disparate teams, static reporting styles and inconsistent measurement processes. This week at Upskill U, Sarah Obermayer, associate director of technology for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), will deliver a case study on the restructuring of one operator's advanced analytics team, the cultural and technical challenges they faced in making the transformation and their tactics to enable users with data self-service. Obermayer will present the live course on "Building a Centralized Analytics Team" this Wednesday, April 19 at 1:00 p.m. ET. (Register for Building a Centralized Analytics Team.)

Figure 1: AT&T's Sarah Obermayer will cover best practices for re-structuring
operators' analytics teams.

Upskill U launched this new series on Analytics on April 7 with a course on "Predictive Analytics 101," led by returning speaker Nick Feamster, professor of computer science and deputy director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University . Feamster examined how to utilize predictive analytics to anticipate threats and bolster network security, and to improve network configuration and performance as the network moves toward virtualization. (Listen to Predictive Analytics 101.)

"One of the things where we can see a lot of improvement in network management as in regard to SDN, NFV and data analytics is in prediction and automation," said Feamster. "As I indicated and as we saw with the AWS outage just a few weeks ago, a lot of problems occur because people aren't able to predict and they are still trying to do things by hand. I think the MANO systems, the introduction of these systems, takes away one part of the problem, which is sort of a fat finger, 'oops' configuration update. But you still need a way of driving that, you need a way of basically telling the MANO systems that 'these are the changes that I'd like to make.' So I think there's a huge opportunity in coupling big data analytics to these MANO systems."

Coming Up at Upskill U:

Upskill U will continue the series on Analytics in May with the following courses:

Want to hear more about AT&T's virtualization strategies? Join us in Austin at the fourth annual Big Communications Event where AT&T Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan is a keynote speaker. There's still time to register and communications service providers
get in for free.

Upskill U courses are delivered live at 1:00 p.m. ET, and on-demand versions of the programs are available immediately after the 45-minute presentation. Don't miss this opportunity to boost your understanding of changing approaches to big data analytics for virtualized ecosystems. Sign up for our new series on Analytics today and tune in to on-demand sessions anytime. (See Upskill U Curriculum Calendar.)

See you on the chat boards!

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Editor, Upskill U