India's Vodafone Idea has extended a deal with IBM for the end-to-end rollout and management of a big data platform.

It will take advantage of IBM's Open Source Hadoop technology to bring down costs and improve operational efficiency.

Vodafone Idea also hopes the insights derived from IBM's technology will help to boost sales, improve customer experience and bolster network security.

With Hadoop, IBM says it can mine more than 1.2 petabytes of data in a month. It collects data from more than 100 systems, including billing and CRM, and combines the results on a single platform.

Vodafone Idea and IBM previously announced a multi-million-dollar five-year agreement aimed at improving services for retail and business subscribers. Together with IBM's Red Hat subsidiary, they teamed up earlier this year on the development of a cloud service for core network functions.

Telcos worldwide are making use of advanced analytics technologies to provide the most relevant products and services to their customers. Big data is also helping service providers to unlock new revenue opportunities and make more informed decisions quickly.

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"Along with IBM, we have implemented many first-of-kind projects and the big data and analytics engagement is one such initiative," said Vishant Vora, Vodafone Idea's chief technology officer, in a statement.

"The open source approach has helped us in modernizing infrastructure and network experience, helping our people and partners in quicker business decision making. The power of data will help transform our cloud and AI journey in the future."

Vodafone Idea recently said it would rebrand as Vi after it has finished combining the Vodafone and Idea networks, which merged about two years ago.

IBM has also collaborated with Bharti Airtel in India to build a telco cloud network that supports core operations.

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— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading