NCS has recently added mobility intelligence services to its advanced analytics and big data solutions through its recently announced integration with DataSpark, a telco-centric data science and engineering subsidiary of Singtel Group.
A key capability of DataSpark is using mobility data intelligence to help organisations make better-informed business strategy and plans by understanding how people move, where they go, and what they do. This is done by processing large amounts of anonymised mobile, Global Positioning System (GPS), public transport, road network, immigration, and census data.
With a presence in Australia (known as DSpark), Indonesia, Philippines, and Singapore, DataSpark offers a range of solutions ranging from artificial intelligence and machine learning, to bespoke telecommunication data tools.
In 2020, DataSpark successfully gathered anonymised telco-sourced data on changes in unique daily worker volumes within Singapore and Australia’s Central Business Districts (CBD), which provided insights and solutions into the future of workers in CBD offices.
DataSpark will be integrated into NCS NEXT organisation, and it will continue to run independently under NEXT to further accelerate and expand its product and service offerings.
Bringing greater innovations in IoT
Wynthia Goh, head of NEXT Digital at NCS, said that the integration of DataSpark into NCS enables new opportunities for greater innovation and growth in areas like IoT.
“IoT application services can be deployed in a multitude of scenarios by leveraging rich movement data and drawing actionable insights to help clients in wide-ranging solutions including; optimising network coverage, redirecting freight companies’ shipments, managing traffic congestions, enhancing real-time cybersecurity operations, and helping governments enrich their IoT infrastructure,” Goh told FutureIoT.
Indeed, the integration between the two companies will enable enterprises to better harness big data for digital transformation, augment their existing data platforms with geo-spatial data, and transform the data into mobility intelligence to draw deeper customer insights and drive business outcomes.
The mobility data available includes data from IoT devices. Device usage and traffic pattern can be deployed in the following use cases:
- Managing the distribution and location of IoT devices to optimise coverage
- Managing device performance or detect breakdown or faulty IoT devices
- Cybersecurity to detect anomaly behaviour in device usage or traffic patterns against baselines, detect botnet attacks or to identify IoT devices that have been compromised
A win-win partnership
Ng Kuo Pin, chief executive officer of NCS said DataSpark is NCS' trusted digital transformation partner for governments and enterprises in the Asia Pacific region.
“We are committed to helping our clients succeed by harnessing new technologies in big data, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. Adding DataSpark’s geo-spatial and mobility intelligence services to our already robust end-to-end data capabilities opens up new possibilities for our clients, by enabling them to draw an incredibly detailed understanding of how people and their customers move, identifying unmet needs and growth opportunities,” Ng said.
Shaowei Ying, chief operating officer of DataSpark pointed out that the company’s presence in high-growth markets and unique capabilities in mobility data intelligence are a natural complement to NCS’ growth strategy in Asia Pacific.
“By joining the NCS family, we can expand our digital footprint to reach new clients in a variety of sectors such as healthcare, out-of-home media, retail, tourism, transport, urban planning, and more. With the synergy of NCS’ resources and NCS NEXT teams, we are excited to explore the growth opportunities this integration will bring and will continue to innovate to help our clients make informed business decisions with mobility data and actionable insights,” Ying said.
