Sullivan Group profile
Xeround inroduced me to one of their customers, Pelephone, so that I could hear first hand experience's with Xeround's "Intelligent Data Grid." I've spoke with Xeround in the past (see Xeround's Intelligent Data Grid for more information.) I spoke with Ilan Alter, Director Cellular Applications for Pelephone.
Please tell us about your organization.
Pelephone, Israel's leading mobile telephone company is owned by Bezeq, The Israel Telecommunication Corporation Ltd. It supports approximately 2.7 million subscribers and has rougly 4,200 employes. In 2006, it had revenues of N.I.S 4.478 billion ($1.09 billion). Pelephone was a CDMA operator. It has installed in January 2009 and is now operating a HSPA service (a high speed GSM-based data service).
What are you doing that needed this technology?
Due to the fact that the company has added one more network, Pelephone had to build a new subscriber database. This would support all of the value added services of the new network. This database would support both the CDMA and the HSPA subscribers.
What did you consider before making a selection?
Pelephone looked for a real time database that would provide a response time that was much faster than the one they were currently using. The most important criteria was performance, that is the time it takes to get a response. They tested a number of databases that are known to support this sort of high performance before making a selection.
Why did you select this product?
After looking at all of the available database products, Pelephone implemented a proof of concept test and discovered that the performance of Xeround was much better than the others. Xeround's product has a unique option in that it will support both LDAP or SQL access.
What tangible benefits can you attribute to use of this product?
When Pelephone started to implement an HSPA network, the company decided that it wanted to use one database to support all of the users. The users should not have to be aware of the technology supporting the value added services that they use. This can be challenging when these services, such as SMS, are implemented differently and have different characteristics on CDMA and HSPA networks. Having only one database would reduce the implementation time and support costs for Pelephone.
What advice would you offer others facing similar challenges?
It is important to do a detailed design before starting a project. It is also important to do a proof of concept test to make sure that products will actually fit your requirements and will do what you need them to do. The requirements have to be specific, such as the product must support X number of transactions per second.
