Optiva Charging Engine on Google Cloud Transforms Truphone's Business Inside and Out
Case Study in Numbers
50% Reduction
in Maintenance Windows
of non-critical activities
2 Hours
to test System Spin Up & 5 Minutes
for automated daily checks
9 S/W Rollouts
in one year with new features &
no disruption to business continuity
The Customer
Truphone, a global mobile network operator, provides mobile connectivity to consumer and enterprise segments and IoT devices to over 3,500 multinational enterprises. It is renowned for its technological breakthrough products offered worldwide. Headquartered in London, it has 15 offices across four continents and continues to expand globally.
The company, a global network of MVNOs united via a dedicated IP mobile core network to create a single international roaming “zone,” was an early adopter in OTT software to compete against traditional mobile operators.
Truphone is riding the wave of digital transformation and IoT and exponentially growing its embedded eSIM business globally while putting customer experience at the forefront.
The Challenge
Truphone wanted to plan well for the future in pursuit of its growth strategy. It knew its BSS could be its growth engine or biggest bottleneck.
It needed a realtime BSS to support flexible multiplay commercial models for existing and new business lines. Further, it required agile rollout of new functionalities and features derived from a complete end-to-end continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to react quickly to market needs and autoscale capabilities. Finally, it also needed to ensure a robust and resilient “always-on” environment and a dynamic commercial model with minimal upfront investment and “pay-as-you-grow” method, offering ensured and efficient cloud economics.
In highly competitive markets like 5G and IoT, fast time to market and an experimental approach would enable it to fail or succeed with minimal costs, time, and effort. Truphone wanted to roll out new innovative products at speed and always keep offerings relevant and up to date for its global audience.
With Optiva Charging Engine built on Google Cloud, Truphone can accelerate our digital transformation and technological innovation journey. We needed our online charging system (OCS) to be agile and robust, support rapid expansion, and scale easily — all without diverting our IT operation’s focus. CI/CD is a new approach in the traditional telecom industry, so it was important that Truphone gain trust in the new technology, adopt these tools and approach, and complete it on their side to ensure a fully automated acceptance process,” said Ralph Steffens, CEO of Truphone.
Ralph Steffens
CEO
Truphone
The Solution
Truphone’s on-premise online charging system (OCS), along with testing and disaster recovery systems, was replaced with one OCS on Google Cloud.
Optiva delivered Optiva Charging Engine, a real-time converged charging solution that is 5G ready and updated every 3-6 months through a CI/CD pipeline. Truphone’s upgrade to the public cloud also included a multi-year support agreement with Optiva, which will further help Truphone maximize its value, monetization, and results. It estimates that the total cost of ownership (TCO) savings from the move to the public cloud will be approximately 60%.
Total time from kickoff to production was just five months (one-fourth the industry standard)
Benefits
With its new OCS firmly in place, Truphone has more dynamic capabilities to launch new digital services quicker,
cheaper, and with lower risk. Truphone’s new automated CI/CD pipeline has enabled a more rapid time to market with
OOTB product templates and reduced the number of tests from over 5,000 to around 190 automated and end-to-end.
Test Automation (OTF)
simplified verification
Quality Check - Project & Operational rollouts
Massive Tarif Testing - 7 Million rate combinations
1.
50% Reduction
in number of Maintenance Windows
Non-critical activities can be done live at anytime
2.
TCO savings
of approximately 60%
3.
OPEX Reduction
Test System spin up on demand in 2 hours utilising current live backups
4.
SW Installations
Achieved 9 rollouts in 1 year
5.
Platform resilience
improved by X10 compared to Bare Meta
6.
Automated Daily Checks
5 min to complete
Automated Trouble Ticket Creation & Escalatio
7.
100% System Integrity
as workloads are elastic, self
balancing & self healing
8.
