Switching to cloud-based BSS took two and a half years, but was seamless – U Mobile CIO
Whale Cloud has announced the completion of its migration of Malaysian telco U Mobile’s Business Support Systems (BSS) to a cloud-native environment. The process took two and a half years to complete, U Mobile’s CIO said in a statement, but it happened gradually and seamlessly thanks to a phased delivery process. It’s the latest win for Whale Cloud in a five-year partnership between the two firms that was first announced in 2019.
U Mobile hosts services for about 7 million Malaysian consumers. The acceleration of cloud-based BSS is keeping in character for the mobile network operators which bills itself as Malaysia’s newest telco, distinguished from the competition for a growing catalog of mobile digital services aimed at Malaysian consumers and businesses. The company touts a universal e-wallet and digital payment acceptance solution and a 5G-ready network.
Neil Tomkinson, Chief Information Officer of U Mobile, said in a statement that the process of migrating U Mobile’s BSS to the cloud took about two and a half years, from start to finish. Complicating matters, the transition happened right as the world went into COVID-19 lockdown. The two firms adopted a remote delivery model to keep things moving, thanks to U Mobile’s Digital Transformation Delivery Framework (DTDF).
“The lean and agile phased delivery approach allows legacy and new platforms to run in parallel, and achieves a smooth migration that mitigates the risk and improves maturity in business operations for U Mobile without impact on customer experience,” said Whale Cloud.
Whale Cloud is the former ZTEsoft, renamed in 2018 after Alibaba acquired ZTE’s stake. Whale Cloud bills its digital BSS as “a cloud-native, 5G-ready, open, and dynamic suite that helps CSPs accelerate the digital transformation with compelling customer satisfaction, greater operational efficiency and sustainable revenue streams.”
At MWC Barcelona earlier this year, Whale Cloud joined Alibaba Cloud to discuss Communication Service Provider (CSP) digital transformation. The companies collaborated on a joint hybrid cloud solution called Digital 2.0 Framework, which combines Alibaba’s Aspara Stack and Cloud Whale’s Cloud Revenue Engine. It’s the latest digital transformation effort aimed at CSPs from the two companies, which have been churning out solutions since 2019, a year after Alibaba acquired and renamed the business.
“It also provides a proven on-prem cloud business operation suite, enabling CSPs to build their clouds for internal business support or build services for large-scale innovation. On top of the technology infrastructure, we provide various cloud-native applications, ranging from Telecom SaaS, Vertical Apps, Content Offering/Management, and Managed Services,” said Whale Cloud.
