Top 10: Customer Data Platforms

Telecommunications providers hold vast quantities of data, yet legacy systems have left the industry struggling to extract meaningful insights. For years, CSPs have operated with siloed OSS, BSS, CRM and network databases that fail to communicate effectively. As a result, creating a consistent, real-time, 360-degree customer view has remained both costly and largely unattainable. Without unified profiles, providers cannot easily identify that a high-value customer experiencing billing issues and poor network performance is at immediate risk of churn. The fragmentation represents one of the sector’s most significant operational weaknesses.

Today, the competitive battleground has shifted decisively from coverage and pricing to customer experience. With most revenue concentrated among a small number of customers, loyalty is crucial. To thrive, CSPs must evolve from basic connectivity providers to data-driven experience leaders. Central to this shift is the Customer Data Platform (CDP), which in telecoms must operate at industrial scale, unifying data, resolving identities across devices and accounts, enabling real-time AI predictions and powering personalised interactions at scale.

As the market matures, large enterprises and cloud providers have become the dominant partners for CDPs, offering either packaged suites or composable architectures. Ultimately, the decisive factor is AI readiness: the ability to activate telecom-specific insights quickly, securely and at scale.

This week, Telco magazine explores the top 10 customer data platforms.

10. SAP

• Founded: 1972 
• Revenue: US$40.3bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Christian Klein 
• Employees : 109,970

SAP, long a leader in enterprise ERP, brings a unique back-office perspective to the Customer Data Platform market. Its SAP Customer Data Platform connects core systems, such as S/4HANA and BRIM, with customer-facing operations, creating a unified view that simplifies complex telco billing, subscriptions and service management. Unlike real-time marketing-focused CDPs, SAP’s strength lies in data centralisation, operational insight and AI-driven analytics for business processes. 

Milestones include integrating SAP CDP with large-scale financial and BI systems for major CSPs, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

9. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

• Founded: 1968 
• Revenue: US$30.1bn
• Chief Executive Officer: K. Krithivasan 
• Employees: 607,980

TCS stands out as both a leading global systems integrator and software provider with its TCS Customer Intelligence & Insights (CI&I) platform. Certified as a “RealCDP” by the CDP Institute, it delivers AI-powered, real-time data unification and activation for telcos. 

TCS leverages deep industry expertise and pre-built analytics use cases, including its CX Transformer, to optimise customer experience, reduce churn and maximise lifetime value. Milestones include successful deployment in call centre optimisation and end-to-end telco data integration projects.

8. IBM

• Founded: 1911
• Revenue: US$65.4bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Arvind Krishna 
• Employees: 293,400

IBM drives Customer Data Platform innovation through its composable “Customer 360” and “Telecom Analytics Solutions,” built on Cloud Pak for Data. Leveraging watsonx AI, IBM unifies customer journey and network data to enable real-time, AI-driven service for telecommunications providers. 

Its platform supports advanced analytics, digital twins and automated customer interactions, thereby reducing operational costs and enhancing the overall experience. Milestones include powering Vodafone Germany’s TOBi digital assistant and Saudi Telecom’s full-scale digital transformation, highlighting IBM’s unique ability to integrate CDP capabilities within a broader AI and hybrid cloud strategy.

7. ServiceNow

• Founded: 2003
• Revenue: US$12.7bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Bill McDermott
• Employees: 26,290

ServiceNow delivers a unique “operational CDP” for telecommunications through its Telecommunications Service Management (TSM) platform. Designed to unify customer and network data, TSM focuses on proactive service rather than marketing, linking service cases to network events for automated issue resolution and outage notifications. 

Its telco-native features – including order, network inventory and fault management – create a consolidated agent workspace. Milestones include a 25% rise in customer satisfaction and a 45% lower cost-to-serve for a Global 2000 CSP, as well as automated order fulfilment driving 20% revenue growth at Radius Telecoms.

6. Amazon (AWS)

• Founded: 1994 
• Revenue: US$691.3bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Andy Jassy
• Employees: 1,578,000

Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers telco Customer Data Platforms with its composable approach, enabling CSPs to build scalable, bespoke solutions on existing cloud data warehouses, such as Redshift. Rather than a single product, AWS provides building blocks – including Pinpoint for communications, Personalise for recommendations and SageMaker for AI/ML – to unify data, predict churn and optimise customer journeys. 

Milestones include enabling telcos to integrate real-time streaming, governance and profile management at scale, making AWS the leading choice for operators with mature data science teams seeking a flexible, enterprise-grade CDP.

5. Alphabet (Google Cloud)

• Founded: 2015 (Alphabet) / 1998 (Google)
• Revenue: US$385.8bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Sundar Pichai
• Employees: 190,160

Google Cloud delivers a composable Customer Data Platform for telcos, centred on BigQuery as a unified source of truth. Its AI-driven tools, including Vertex AI and Looker, enable predictive analytics, real-time Customer 360 views and advanced personalisation. Unique features include augmenting telco data with external datasets, such as Google Trends, to trigger highly relevant offers. 

Milestones include powering Vodafone’s 360-degree customer insight strategy, centralising millions of anonymised records to create a single source of truth and demonstrating Google’s ability to scale AI-driven CDPs across major CSPs.

4. Oracle

• Founded: 1977
• Revenue: US$57.4bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Clay Magouyrk & Mike Sicilia (Co-CEOs)
• Employees: 162,000

Oracle drives telco Customer Data Platform adoption through its Unity CDP, leveraging decades of expertise in BSS/OSS and databases. Unity unifies enterprise data across the Oracle ecosystem, enabling AI-powered churn prediction, recommendations and real-time customer insights. 

Its strength lies in seamlessly integrating with existing billing, CRM and order management systems, making it a natural choice for CSPs entrenched in Oracle technology. Milestones include Vodafone running hundreds of OSS/BSS applications on OCI, as well as AT&T and Vivo migrating critical operations, demonstrating Unity’s strategic, data-first role in telco transformation.

3. Adobe

• Founded: 1982
• Revenue: US$23.1bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Shantanu Narayen
• Employees: 30,700

Adobe leads marketing-driven Customer Data Platforms with its Real-Time CDP, built on the Adobe Experience Platform. For telcos, it unifies known and pseudonymous data to create actionable profiles and deliver personalised experiences at scale. 

Unique features include Adobe Journey Optimizer, Customer Journey Analytics and a telco-specific data model. Milestones include T-Mobile anticipating customer behaviour, BT boosting email open rates by 17% while halving call centre volumes and Telefónica Germany reducing churn, demonstrating Adobe’s unmatched ability to orchestrate cross-channel telco customer experiences.

2. Microsoft

• Founded: 1975
• Revenue: US$281.7bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Satya Nadella
• Employees: 228,000

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is a powerful Customer Data Platform, but its true value for telecommunications lies in its role as an enterprise AI partner. Built on Azure and enhanced by the telco-specific Dynamics 365 accelerator, it unifies sales, marketing and service data while enabling fast deployment through TM Forum-aligned data models. 

Unique features include native integration with Microsoft 365 and Azure Communication Services, as well as generative AI capabilities powered by OpenAI. Milestones include T-Mobile creating AI-driven decisioning, AT&T launching “Ask AT&T” for employee efficiency, Orange advancing its AI transformation and Jio optimising operations via ODA Canvas. 

Microsoft uniquely blends a packaged CDP with a composable AI platform, driving enterprise-wide telco transformation.

1. Salesforce

• Founded: 1999
• Revenue: US$37.9bn
• Chief Executive Officer: Marc Benioff
• Employees: 76,450

Salesforce ranks #1 for telecommunications as the most comprehensive, end-to-end AI CRM and Customer Data Platform with its Data Cloud for Communications. Designed to unify data, AI and CRM, it provides a single, 360-degree view of the customer across sales, service and operations. 

Unique telco-specific modules, such as Billing Inquiry Manager, Enterprise Product Catalogue and a communications-focused data model, break down functional silos. Proactive service integrates network SLO data with customer profiles, enabling the automation of alerts. 

Milestones include 36% faster resolution times and a 37% boost in employee productivity with Einstein AI. Salesforce’s platform uniquely combines telco-native data, AI-driven insights and operational tools, making it the ultimate strategic partner for CSPs seeking enterprise-wide customer unification and transformation.