Openserve – DevOps
Openserve, a subsidiary of the Telkom Group, is South Africa’s largest telecommunications infrastructure provider, boasting the country’s most extensive fixed broadband network.
Case Details
Clients: Openserve
Period: June 2024
Tags: Telecom
Project Duration: 1 year
Client website: www.openserve.co.za
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The Story
Openserve, a subsidiary of the Telkom Group, is South Africa’s largest telecommunications infrastructure provider, boasting the country’s most extensive fixed broadband network. To maintain its leadership and meet the growing demand for high-speed internet services, Openserve initiated a comprehensive modernization project in 2019. The goal was to transition from an outdated provisioning system to a more efficient, cloud-based architecture capable of handling all provisioning, maintenance, and inventory requests, at last, to also meet its own customers’ demands.
The Challenges
The existing system faced several critical challenges:
- Outdated Infrastructure: The legacy system lacked scalability and could no longer support the expanding needs of Openserve’s operations.
- Lack of Geo-Redundancy: The absence of geo-redundancy posed significant risks to service continuity, especially for a network of Openserve’s magnitude.
- Security Concerns: As one of South Africa’s largest networks, ensuring robust security measures was imperative to protect sensitive data and maintain customer trust.
- Integration of New Use Cases: The client has started a development and implementation of new use cases and workflows which are to be running on the new platform, necessitating seamless integration with existing systems.
The solution
To address these challenges, our team adopted a DevOps-centric approach, emphasizing collaboration, automation, and iterative development:
1. Development and Testing:
We designed and sized a new OpenShift platform, initially deploying it as a test environment. This setup allowed for the installation of all custom applications and facilitated integration with external network elements to ensure proper operation. Comprehensive testing was carried out to also ensure system reliability and performance.
2. Production Deployment: Upon successful testing, the solution was replicated in the production environment across two physical sites. The new system featured enhanced hardware capabilities and geo-redundancy which was crucial, aligning with Openserve’s requirements for scalability and resilience.
3. Client Collaboration: Throughout the process, we maintained close collaboration with Openserve, ensuring their stringent requirements were met and provided them back a deep understanding of our solution. This partnership built trust and opened avenues for discussions on product improvements and new feature implementations and has also strengthened our business relationship.
Conclusion
The successful deployment of the new platform marked a significant milestone, enabling Openserve to continue designing and implementing new business requirements on their side. The project’s success is a testament to the power of effective collaboration and the strategic application of DevOps principles in modernizing critical telecommunications infrastructure which serves millions of people.