The cloud is not only the new norm in modern software development but it underpins every digital transformation within enterprises. With the opportunity for increased business flexibility and scalability, cloudification is underway in most organizations determined to remain competitive and differentiated in future markets.
We are delighted to present one of our latest cloudification success stories for one of the number of customers that have already embarked on this exciting journey with us.
Porting a collection of bare metal applications in the core network of tier-1 operator to telco cloud VNF
Our client, a global technology vendor headquartered in the US, initiated major cloud migration project and requested R Systems’ expert support in the areas of development, migration and technical consultancy. The project consisted in porting a collection of bare metal applications in the core network of tier-1 operator to telco cloud virtual network function (VNF). For telecom operators VNF facilitates OpEx savings and also provides a platform for rapid service deployment and monetization. While operators expect both telco grade quality and improved performance in virtualized environments, VNF triggers major transformations in the network requiring highly robust software and hardware architectures.
Based on the long-term partnership in product development and R Systems’ comprehensive expertise in cloud technologies and migration strategy, R Systems was selected as key provider in the cloudification project.
Over the years R Systems has developed and delivered a wide range of network element applications which make up the client’s unified subscriber database, one of the key functions in telecom networks. These applications include: bootstrapping function, application publisher, multimedia telephone synchronization server, PCRF locator function, real-time provisioning gateway, enhanced equipment identity register, provisioning gateway proxy.
Cloud migration and deployment of network elements products including central administrator VNF
R Systems undertook the migration and deployment into the cloud of the network element products it had developed, including the development of a new central administrator VNF responsible for statistics, analytics and management of graphical user interfaces of the network elements.
For the successful delivery of the cloudification project R Systems has provided a complex mix of technology skills, know-how and strategic approach, with a focus on performance and quality of delivery.
The technologies used included: OpenStack, Chef, Docker, Kubernetes, containers, Kernel-based virtual machines, Heat Orchestration Templates, Mistral workflows, Ansible playbooks, R Systems automated testing product – TOP Testing Suite. For more details regarding cloud technologies and migration roadmap, please read the full use case.
The overall cloudification effort of all applications amounted to a significant 5,000 mandays with constant monitoring of quality and reliability throughout the delivery of the cluster of projects. One example of project performance indicators has shown defect density under 0.15% from a total of 290 functional test cases. As part of the quality assurance process, for specific projects of the cluster, end customer acceptance test were executed using the .
Cloudification outcomes
Cloudification, as an essential ingredient of every digital transformation journey, is more than just a technology project, it is a powerful tool that underpins business success.
By successfully porting the applications in the cloud, R Systems has enabled the easier management of instances and hardware resources, increased scalability with increased number of subscribers and easier deployment of network elements. Containerization of telecom applications was also implemented to provide easy path for capacity increase and advanced security. R Systems cloudified applications were integrated with the client’s ecosystem of applications to provide a unique and stable set of functionalities, to share information about system components health and stability via metrics viewable as a whole ecosystem or just single node, to provide statistics about system throughput and performance and logs availability from all crucial components in a highly available and searchable way.
R Systems continues to support the customer’s digital transformation projects in some of the latest technology areas such as cloud services, app containerization, micro-services, VoLTE, 5G, big data analytics.