The subscriber data management (SDM) market rose 29 percent to $1.4 billion in 2014 — fueled by telecom operator’s demand for voice over LTE (VoLTE) and subscriber analytics, said Infonetics Research, now part of IHS.

“Voice over LTE is continuing to drive SDM spending in developed markets as operators look to manage their subscriber data over multiple network domains. We expect the adoption of voice over Wi-Fi to have a similar effect,” said Shira Levine, research director for service enablement and subscriber intelligence at Infonetics Research.

The telecom analysis report said that telecom operators seek to break down the data silos that exist within their organizations and better leverage subscriber data to improve the customer experience and drive additional revenue, Levine said.

Mobile operators look to deploy subscriber data management (SDM) as a centralized subscriber data repository that can be integrated with multiple front-end applications potentially from multiple vendors, said Infonetics Research.

The cost savings and operational efficiencies associated with reducing the number of subscriber data repositories remains a major factor behind SDM spending, particularly in emerging markets facing rapid subscriber growth.

Virtualization of front-end applications such as home subscriber server (HSS) and policy and charging rules function (PCRF) are well underway, and virtualization of the backend SDM platform is following suit.
The report noted that main concerns include reliability, availability and security, while main barriers include interoperability concerns, subscriber data sensitivity and organizational silos.

As SDM evolves to an independent backend solution that can enable emerging areas such as identity and analytics, it will create new opportunities for vendors in the HSS and home location register (HLR) markets.