The Data Maturity Program for Ooredoo Group

From a business perspective, Ooredoo recognized that telecommunications operators such as Ooredoo sit on a true gold mine of data. Yet, historically, only a fraction of that potential value had been realized. Before launching the Data Maturity Program, data utilization was largely fragmented, with inconsistent definitions and varying levels of trust across markets. Our ambition was to unlock this untapped value by building a unified, governed, and business-driven data ecosystem across the Ooredoo Group.

The program’s first business objective was to unify business terminologies and data definitions across all operating companies. A shared language of KPIs and metrics ensures that performance comparisons, reporting, and decision-making are accurate and transparent across the Group. The second objective was to ensure data quality and reliability, building the foundation of trust necessary for effective data-driven management. Another key driver was data monetization, enabling Ooredoo to responsibly leverage its vast data assets for external use cases and partnerships while maintaining strict adherence to privacy and data protection regulations.

With the rapid evolution of cloud and AI technologies, Ooredoo saw an opportunity to modernize its data platforms by embracing multi-cloud architectures through hyper-scalers such as Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The program also focused on enabling advanced analytics, AI, and data science capabilities by strengthening foundational components such as scalable data pipelines, governed data catalogs, and unified metadata management.

To achieve this, we ran a comprehensive maturity assessment across eight markets, covering two main domains:

• Data Engineering: we assessed our platforms, managed data elements, ingestion and visualization processes, retention policies, and adoption of a standardized telco data model

• Data Governance: we evaluated metadata management, business data clusters, execution of data quality frameworks, and the organizational setup required to sustain governance alongside business stakeholders.

Based on the assessment results, we defined and prioritized key actions per market to elevate maturity levels and align with business goals. On the engineering side, we designed and approved a Group-wide blueprint for data platforms, accommodating regulatory variations in cloud adoption. Our hybrid strategy enables migration to public cloud where permitted, while maintaining on-prem data platforms where required.

We also committed to reducing dependency on traditional data warehouses by leveraging big data technologies and migrating Hadoop environments to open-source, providing greater flexibility and cost efficiency.

Each market was assigned a target to deploy self-service BI capabilities, empowering business users to generate insights independently. To support this, we adopted Denodo to establish a semantic layer that translates technical catalogs into business-friendly views. We also set a goal to ensure that reporting data is refreshed within six hours, ensuring agility and relevance in decision-making.

While these technical and organizational transformations were underway, we also focused on delivering tangible business value. We launched an internal initiative to automate and standardize the collection of performance KPIs across all markets. Using Microsoft Azure and Power BI, hundreds of KPIs are now collected automatically with no manual intervention, powering monthly and quarterly performance reviews. In addition, an in-house data monetization platform is being developed to allow B2B subscribers to reach customers securely — monetizing data responsibly while fully respecting data privacy regulations.

In the past two years, we have successfully supported Ooredoo Qatar and Ooredoo Maldives in migrating their data platforms to the public cloud. Ooredoo Qatar completed a major migration to Google Cloud Platform, leveraging BigQuery and Google’s advanced analytics tools, while Maldives migrated to Microsoft Azure. Across all markets, we ensured the right software components, storage, and processing power for internal data science teams, and recently integrated local GPUs within data platforms to accelerate AI workloads and enable LLM-based use cases to be delivered in-house.

The program has firmly positioned Ooredoo as a regional leader in data-driven transformation, achieving measurable maturity uplift, enhanced efficiency, and stronger alignment between IT and business value creation.