Supplying Internet and mobile services to over 160 million customers across the Middle East, Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is one of the largest providers in the region, extending as far as Africa and South Asia. With millions of customers contacting STC daily for billing, payment, network usage, and support, all of this information has to be monitored somewhere. Located in the headquarters of STC is a data center that features a soccer field– sized wall of monitors all displaying information regarding network statistics, service analytics, and customer calls. The Problem When you have acres of information in front of you, prioritizing and contextualizing the data are paramount in understanding it. STC needed to identify the relevant metrics, properly visualize them, and provide them to the right people, often with time-sensitive information. “The executives didn’t have the ability to see key performance indicators” said Waleed Al Eshaiwy, manager of the data center at STC. “They would have to contact the technical teams to get status reports. By that time, it would often be too late and we would be reacting to problems rather than preventing them.”

Questions for Discussion
1. Why do you think telecommunications companies are among the prime users of information visualization tools?
2. How did Saudi Telecom use information visualization?
3. What were their challenges, the proposed solution, and the obtained results?