Case Study

Implementing a strategic end-to-end

operational intelligence platform at
Vodafone Ireland
See how Vodafone Ireland have achieved
business efficiencies by implementing a
centralised end-to-end operational
intelligence platform to manage their
network. A multi-phase approach has
enabled complete visibility of the entire
network for all services offered, with a
focus on optimising customer intelligence
throughout.
 Contents

Introduction: Growth in a saturated market 2

The customer challenge: Complexity, scale and customer experience 2

The customer requirements: Small steps to big data 3

The right solution: Zen 3

Phase 1: 4G RAN Network Performance Management Proof of Concept 4

Phase 2: Integration of 2G and 3G RAN Network Performance Management 5

Phase 3: Addition of CORE technology 6

Phase 4: Small Cell Network Analytics Introduced 7

Phase 5: Fixed Line services management added, enabling quad-play services 8

Phase 6: Network trace and probe data added, providing additional visibility for 9
operational intelligence

Phase 7: The addition of new transmission data 10

Phase 8: New Devices - Netperform smartphone app 11

Phase 9: Hadoop data store providing long-term data retention 12

The future outlook 13

About SysMech 13

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 Introduction
Growth in a saturated market

The early days of rapid market growth are over in the telecommunications industry, as market
penetration nears 100%. Vodafone Ireland knew they were facing some major challenges as its
business grew in line with the maturing mobile telephony market. There are a number of routes open
to operators in this increasingly competitive and regulated industry, but whichever route is taken, two
imperatives remain: grow revenue and reduce cost.

Some operators try to maintain their position and wait. A defensive and negative strategy, in terms of
growth and addressing the ever increasing demands of the customer. Vodafone Ireland however
took the positive approach of recognizing the need to grow revenue and margin through the provision
of a wider range of products and services, while re-architecting its cost model through the
implementation of new technology to aid the deployment, management and optimization of its
infrastructure.

The customer challenge

Change, complexity and scale

Vodafone Irelands new products and services will undoubtedly drive additional revenue, but, by
definition, they cause a step away from existing skills and systems, and introduce an extra level of
complexity and change to the business.

The introduction of new products and services increases the scale of the data problem directly in
proportion to the number of new products and services introduced. That may be linear, but the inter-
related data per customer e.g. the interaction of services 1 and 2 as that customer uses them, rises
exponentially. The data management problem grows, and that assumes all the data is in one place!
A new data management model is essential.

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 The customer requirements
Small steps to advanced operational intelligence

The processes for Vodafone Ireland to create new products and services is established, but their
operational management is now entirely new and multi-dimensional. What Vodafone Ireland knew was
the following:

They would need to manage many new products and services with the same team i.e. no new
people.
They would be facing a new challenge in data volumes and needed a structured approach to
managing it.
They needed to embrace the new technologies available in real-time analytics, automation and
visualization.
They needed to reduce the number of applications, user interfaces and platform tools within the
business.
They needed to implement a platform that could be used to support all data functions within the
business and all potential product and services that might be introduced downstream.
They needed a platform that was proofed against any potential massive spikes of data and customer
loading that might occur downstream.

The right solution

Vodafone Ireland chose SysMechs Zen as its operational
intelligence platform to manage all its network centric products
and services.

After an extensive evaluation, Vodafone Ireland asked SysMech

to prove the value of Zen through a Proof Of Concept that
managed the performance of Vodafone Irelands 4G network as
it was released to the market.

Read on to see the individual phases of implementing an

end-to-end data management solution at Vodafone Ireland.

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 Phase 1:
4G RAN network performance management proof of
concept

Everyone, not unreasonably, wants to see the value of a Quick look

product, especially one of mission criticality, before
committing the future strategy of the business. SysMech
A live proof of concept system was
recognized this need within Vodafone Ireland and rapidly
deployed, establishing the product
initiated a Proof Of Concept to prove the applicability of
architecture and demonstrating the
Zen. Specifically, the intention was to prove the following
Zen solution would provide value.
concepts:

Real-Time Monitoring: Could Zen load data with no Results

latency added to the data flow?
Speed of Deployment: The goal was to deploy the The solution was deployed within 2
system within 2 days of commencing the project. days of commencing the project.
Multi-tenanted solution deployment: To minimise The proof of concept demonstrated the
initial investment, the proof of concept was deployed value of Zen and was converted to a
utilizing the active Zen system in Vodafone UK. fully live 4G network performance
Ease of Use: Simple monitoring, amendment and management solution.
creation of new reports and dashboards via the Zen user
interface was essential.
Range and Applicability of Zen: Consideration was Architecture
given to how all the other Vodafone Ireland network
elements could be deployed within Zen and what
limitations would be imposed by the system. It was
clear that the Zen environment would be easily scalable
and deployed rapidly.
Flexibility: The Zen system was shown to be flexible to
changes in dashboards, reports, the UI and network
connections.
Value for Money: Zen proved to be excellent value for
money compared with existing systems and market
alternatives. Zen was an easy decision to defend
internally.

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 Phase 2:
Integration of 2G and 3G RAN network performance
management
Vodafone accepted the Proof of Concept and a formal
commercial agreement was developed and concluded.
This Agreement covered the rollout of the next few phases
of the project and the subsequent transition of the Zen
platform to an Irish Data Centre.
Phase 2 was, principally, a deployment of the remaining
interfaces of the Radio Access Network, namely Ericsson 2G
and 3G. This exercise was broadly similar to the Proof of
Concept but lead to extensions to the RAN Dashboards
such that all 3 technologies could be viewed in one screen,
or selected independently, depending upon the operator
need.
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Quick look
2G and 3G RAN data was introduced to
the solution, and the solution was
transferred to an Irish Data Centre.
Results
Vodafone now have visibility of the
entire RAN network from one screen.
This has saved time and resource,
reducing the number of tools,
dashboards and reports used by RAN
optimisation teams.
Architecture
 Phase 3:
Addition of Core technology

After the Radio Access Network interfaces and dashboards

were completed, and operational efficiencies proven,
Quick look
Vodafone chose to activate the Core performance
management modules of Zen. The Core consists of multiple The 2G, 3G and 4G Core network was

network components that were all added into the system added to the Zen platform, giving the

and then accessed by one Zen dashboard. Core support team improved visibility.

This dashboard enables the operations and support teams

to view the entire Core network in just one screen.
Results

Automated KPI breach alerting was

switched on the Core support team
can now rely on automatic alerts rather
than continual manual checks to ensure
Core performance.

Architecture

The KPIs for the Core Network are typically simpler, and
definitely less transient than those in the RAN world; there
may be static KPIs for days or weeks. That being said,
when there is a breach or negative trend of a KPI within
this technology, it has a much greater impact on the
business as a whole and needs urgent attention. As such,
the Core was the first element of Vodafone Irelands Zen
system that implemented automated KPI breach alerting
using SysMechs Zen Impulse technology. The Core team
can now leave Zen to monitor the core, safe in the
knowledge that any breaches will be automatically alerted
to them, and a one pane of glass view of their systems is
6 always available.
 Phase 4:
Small cell network analytics introduced

Small Cell technology has played an important role for

many operators in filling gaps in the country wide coverage
Quick look
model, and offering customers the ability to leverage their
mobile contracts from places where they would be limited Vodafone's Femto cell data was added

otherwise; typically remote rural or indoor locations. into Zen to give visibility of Small Cell
performance across the network.

Adding Small Cell technology to the Zen environment is a

comparatively simple task, requiring; an interface to the
Small Cell data (in Vodafone Irelands case Femto cells), the
Results
development of a dashboard for the NOC team, and
correlation with the rest of the coverage model in exiting
The Network Operations team can
reports and dashboards.
now visualise performance across the
entire radio network and consequent
handover to small cells within one
screen.

Architecture

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 Phase 5:
Fixed line services management added, enabling
quad-play services

Vodafone Irelands strategy is to expand into the delivery of

additional fixed line services to its mobile customer base.
Quick look
The intention is, obviously, to grow overall revenue through
affinity selling to its very loyal and satisfied customer base. Performance monitoring of fixed line
services (home phone, broadband

Whilst the promise of new sources of revenue is a key driver, and TV) was integrated into the

it does bring some significant challenges in the respect of: centralised Zen platform.

Market knowledge new areas requiring new skills and

Results
expertise
Third Party supply - some of the new services or content
Call centre teams now have visibility
were not owned, end to end, by Vodafone Ireland; so the
of multi-service customers in one
customer experience is not under the immediate control of
screen. This has given improved
Vodafone
understanding of cross service
Multi-service offers are by their very nature related to the
customer satisfaction, and improved
performance of all components. One poor service
response times.
experience impacts on the perception of all services.

It was considered essential that Vodafone Ireland, especially Architecture

its Call Centre team was able to have a single view of the
multi-service customer; four different applications, or even 4
screens, to view the end-to-end service was just not
acceptable.

Zen offered Vodafone Ireland the ability to simply integrate

all its services into one customer view, enabling the Call
Centre Agents to be able to see the status of all the services
of each customer in one window. This capability enables
Vodafone Ireland to understand cross-service impacts, and
view service affecting events from a customer perspective.

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Phase 6:
Network trace and probe data added, providing additional
visibility for operational intelligence

To gain additional visibility for operational intelligence, Quick look

Vodafone needed to see the network performance of each
individual call in comparison to the overall network Network trace and probe data were
performance within a given region. integrated into Zen to give additional
visibility of individual subscriber events
Zen enabled Vodafone Ireland to take Call Trace information across the network.
from the network, using it to identify individual subscriber
events across the network. This proved to be highly
advantageous; for example Vodafone could identify an Results
individual subscriber whom appeared to be in a region with
good performance, however received a below average signal Vodafone now have additional visibility
quality on all their calls. This measure is indicative that the of individual subscriber voice call
handset is underperforming, and the subscriber is now suitable performance, enabling the identification
for upgrade. of performance issues and associated
upsell opportunities.
Zen also acquires probe information from the network,
enabling Vodafone to rebuild a call from its constituent
network signals using the power of Zens real-time analytics
Architecture
database. Once created, the call can be correlated with the
network trace to create a myriad of use cases where the
quality of the network can be enhanced.
 Coming up - Phase 7:
The addition of transmission data

To complete the full end-to-end view of the network,

Quick look
enhanced visibility of the transmission domain is needed,
ensuring continual network availability and quality. The
Multi-vendor transmission data will give
addition of multi-vendor transmission data interfaces will
enhance visibility of the end-to-end
enable Vodafone to easily analyse thousands of new
network performance from a
parameters from the centralised Zen application, alongside
centralised application.
the Radio and Core domains.

Users will be able to monitor equipment performance and Results

link health, to gain an improved understanding of the entire
network, and rectify high priority issues more rapidly. For Network operators will have the
example, a performance drop in transmission can impact functionality to automatically detect
multiple RAN cells, equating in significant resource strain on performance issues across the
RAN engineers. By alerting to this at a transmission level, transmission domain, optimising
the issue can be rapidly isolated, alerted on and rectified. resource further down the chain and
This equates to a significant resource saving for RAN rectifying issues more rapidly.
engineers.

Architecture

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 Coming up - Phase 8:
New devices - Netperform smartphone app

Once Vodafone Ireland were able to understand the

complete experience of the customer when connected to its
Quick look
network, only one element on the whole customer
experience remains unclear. A feed of the Netperform
smartphone data will give visibility

Clearly, if the customer cannot connect to the network, it is of failed calls which could not

a poor experience, and its a poor experience that is connect to the network.

invisible to the operator. The only mechanism for

identifying an inability to connect to the network, is the
Results
handset/device itself.

Vodafone will gain a better

Vodafone use the NetPerform Smartphone App to
understanding of the behaviour of
understand the behaviour of its customers devices; on and
customers devices, giving a more
off the network. This model is only as good as the number
complete picture of the network quality
of customers who have downloaded the App, itself beyond
and coverage. This can in turn inform
the control Vodafone Ireland, but every download helps
network planning teams.
paint the picture of the real network quality and thus
completes the understanding of the customer experience.
Architecture

Zen will take the NetPerform

feed as just another data source
to correlate with other data
source to offer the complete
picture of customer experience
and coverage.

The NetPeform smartphone app

enables users to rapidly check
their data speeds.

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 Coming up - Phase 9:
Hadoop data store providing long-term data retention

Zens data capture technology enables inbound network

Quick look
data to be targeted at one of three core data stores,
dependent upon the characteristics of the application being
A project to implement a Hadoop
used.
datastore for long term data archiving
has been initiated.
By default, the data is loaded into the real-time analytics
data store, making it immediately available for monitoring,
analysis, visualization and automation. Transactional data,
such as that in network alarm transitions, is held in a Results
transactional store. Data heavily reliant on relationships,
such as Topology, is routed to a graph database. The resulting solution will enable the
co-existence of long term data storage
Hadoop itself is just a file system until exploited by an and real-time analytics, resulting in a
application; it carries no intelligence in isolation. Zen reduced computing load and a long
enables parallel data loading into a Hadoop datastore, term cost saving for Vodafone.
reducing the compute load and consequently the overall
cost. This enables the two big data worlds (long term
archive and real-time analytics) to co-exist with purpose.
Architecture
Many of the perceived applications in the MNO market will
require Terabytes of data to be acquired daily. Without an
application designed to live in these dual worlds, the costs
of this mode of operation will remain implausible.

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 The future outlook
NFV and new technology

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) will most certainly be one area for consideration for Vodafone as
the use cases are identified. Zen enables CSPs to maintain business continuity as they move toward
applications in a virtual environment. The platform can simultaneously monitor the virtual platform as
well as the applications that are within said platform.

The potential of Zen within Vodafone Ireland is only scratching the surface; many new technologies,
teams and use cases are planned to exploit its rich potential in the next 12 months and beyond.

About SysMech

SysMech are a UK based software development company, servicing the telecommunications

industry. The core product is Zen, a big data analytics solution. Zen is an end-to-end OSS
Operational Intelligence platform, which gives mobile network operators (MNOs) visibility of all of
their data in one screen. It covers multiple network domains, technologies and vendor
equipment, and can be used for both mobile and fixed-line services. The platform brings together
several traditional functions into one, improving operational efficiency, and reducing long term
expenditure:

Network Performance Management Want to know more?

Network Fault Management
Service Assurance
info@sysmech.co.uk
Root Cause Analysis & Impact Analysis
Customer Experience Management
+44 (0) 1189 332 220

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