It's that time of year again. Holidays, parties, gifts, cooking, closing annual business, hitting targets and preparing for 2017. 
Looking back on the year for the communication and media industries, it has been a year of transition for the industry and for many of the customers I work with in my role at SAS.
Communication service providers (CSPs) and media companies are wrangling with digital transformation – where traditional business models are suffering from declining revenues or becoming obsolete. As the market changes, CSP activities now span many businesses. Per PWC Strategy&: CSPs are challenged to be a network guarantors, business enablers, experience providers and global multimarketers. This is no easy feat, and the key to being successful is to innovate with analytics. For media companies, digital transformation means moving from traditional media like DVDs to new digital media, like over the top services. Plus, CSPs are buying up media companies, further changing the landscape.
Many of our customers are either dabbling or diving into open systems to provide analytics insights. While these tools provide many benefits, customers also report challenges for complex analytics projects, like ones that directly impact customers or business forecasting. And when you spend time writing applications with open source systems, you're now in the business of developing software applications vs. focusing on your core business.
At SAS, we're starting to see a shift where customers are looking for an analytics platform, but one that is open and flexible. An open platform supports packaged applications like SAS to manage complex analytics projects, along with open systems to spawn innovation. A platform that can keep data secure and provide governance.
Forrester recently released The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Insight Platform Suites, Q4 2016 report that lists SAS as the clear leader. Per Forrester, enterprise insight platforms that combine data management, analytics, and insight execution tools were the top trend emerging in 2016.
After meeting with numerous communications and media customers this year, I've seen how an analytics platform can shape a business. A great example is Telstra in Australia. As Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra wanted to expand the use of analytics in to all decisions and improve its understanding of customer needs. One particular program set out to assess the impact any decision would have on the company's Net Promoter Scores. They ran two major initiatives – Thanks A Million and Check In. Both were enormously success in improving Net Promoter Scores and were completely analytically driven.
Closing out the year, we have a lot to look forward to and more evolution on the horizon in 2017. With the stepping down of Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC, we could see the end of net neutrality and changes to the usage of customer data.
At SAS, we're embracing the transformation in the industry by changing the way we develop software, approach the market and execute deals with our customers. We're adapting to new standards, and recommitting to be the company that CSPs and media companies can trust and rely on to make customer centric decisions. To learn more about any of these changes, come see us at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where we'll be working with our customers to further transform in 2017.
