Digicel Jamaica Boosts Processing and Query Response Times, Reduces Storage Requirements
 
 

Digicel Jamaica Boosts Processing and Query Response Times, Reduces Storage Requirements

Printer View Printer View

Since its launch in 2001, Digicel Jamaica has become the fastest growing wireless telecommunications operator in the Caribbean. In four years, Digicel became renowned for competitive rates, unbeatable coverage, superior customer care, a wide variety of products and services, and state-of-the-art handsets. It is the largest global system for mobile (GSM) communications operator in the region. By offering innovative wireless services and community support, Digicel has become a leading brand in the Caribbean and has placed the region at the cutting edge of wireless communications.

Digicel’s IT organization acts as a shared service for the company’s operations. As part of its duties and service level agreement (SLA) with internal clients, the IT team is responsible for delivering operations reports to business managers in 16 Caribbean markets by 8 a.m. daily. These reports are critical to Digicel’s business as they include data about active subscribers, daily revenue, promotions, and more. Digicel uses the information to make critical decisions, such as the types of promotions to launch, target audiences, and campaign timing. It is therefore, imperative that the information reaches managers in a timely manner.

As data volume grew, Digicel’s legacy data warehousing IT environment could no longer keep pace with reporting requirements. Query times had become longer, and senior managers were receiving data that was 48 hours old―which, in the fast-moving communications sector, is unacceptable.

To address these issues, Digicel’s IT team worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to deploy, with zero downtime, Oracle Exadata Database Machine, greatly improving operational reporting and services for valued subscribers. With Oracle Exadata, Digicel’s IT team can now deliver near-real-time key performance indicator (KPI) reports to senior management—including the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Commercial Director, and teams in 16 Caribbean markets—by 8 a.m. each day, eliminating a two-day lag in getting up-to-date data and vastly improving decision-making.

Digicel also worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to tune the new environment and optimize queries, accelerating the time to realized value.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Digicel Jamaica

  • “With our goal to provide the highest quality communication services to our customers, we needed a highly scalable data infrastructure that provides unparalleled performance, which is why we chose Oracle Exadata Database Machine. We’ve achieved rapid gains in internal reporting and look forward to extending the power of our new infrastructure to support our 11 million subscribers.” – Pascal Assaad, IT Director, Digicel Jamaica

  • Provide the near-real-time operational information―such as number of active subscribers, daily revenue, promotion data, and more―that managers need to make informed and agile decisions that drive the company’s continued growth in the region
  • Create a data infrastructure that can scale and deliver processing power required to support the rapidly growing communications provider and its more than 11 million subscribers
  • Enable the shared services IT department to consistently meet SLA requirements set by internal clients

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Worked with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to implement Oracle Exadata Database Machine X-2 Half Rack, with zero downtime
  • Consolidated critical operational data for the company’s operations in 16 Caribbean markets into a single database and gained the scalability and processing power required to support the company’s three-year growth plan
  • Gained the ability to run queries 5 to 15 times faster than in the legacy environment
  • Reduced storage requirements by almost 40%, using Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression
  • Enabled the Digicel IT team to deliver communications services KPI reports to senior level management by 8 a.m. each day―eliminating a two-day lag in data, improving decision-making, and meeting the group’s SLA requirements
  • Provided executives with the ability to make faster decisions about critical promotional programs, as they can now see timely information about subscriber numbers and service minutes
  • Cut power consumption as well as consolidated two servers—one for data warehousing and one for reporting—onto a single platform, reducing IT complexity and streamlining systems management
  • Laid the groundwork to expand the Oracle Exadata Database Machine environment to support other critical business applications, which will, ultimately, improve customer service
  • Leveraged Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services’ expertise to tune the new environment and optimize queries, accelerating time to value

Why Oracle

“We considered several database performance solutions—including Oracle Exadata, Teradata, and IBM Netezza,” said Pascal Assaad, IT director, Digicel Jamaica. “Oracle Exadata Database Machine quickly emerged as the best choice for our organization. It is powerful and cost effective. In addition, we have an unlimited licensing agreement with Oracle, which made the pricing structure even more attractive. Just as important, with existing Oracle solutions already in place, we had the skill set we needed to maintain the new environment.”

Implementation Process

“At the onset of the project, we performed a proof of concept—in which we tested our own queries—and saw significant improvement, including the ability to run queries up to 15 times faster,” Assaad said. “We then completed the full implementation in just three months working with Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services to conduct critical tuning. In particular, Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services was crucial in helping us optimize our queries, which was key to the project’s success.”

Resources