High-Load System Development and Maintenance

Business challenge

Our client is the largest Ukrainian telecom operator, providing communications and data services based on a broad range of mobile and fixed-line technologies. For years, the company has been actively promoting the modernization of the telecom industry in Ukraine, and they were the first to provide Ukrainian customers with telecommunication services emerging in European markets.

However, each new service in our client’s offering has added to the operational complexity of their internal IT systems. To support consistent business growth, the company set a long-term goal to modernize its IT department by leveraging the telecom software services of a technology partner. The company also aimed to enhance operational risk management, increase process auditability, and align all back-office applications with business needs. Therefore, our client started a rigorous tendering process to select three reliable IT services companies capable of taking full responsibility for high-load systems development and maintenance.

Intellias’ well-designed managed services delivery model and experience with high-load systems played a key role in our client’s choice of technology partner. During the tender, we proved our professional reputation and signed a five-year contract with the telecommunications provider.

Services provided

Since our client aimed to make expenses on internal applications more predictable, Intellias experts estimated the costs and team composition for the requested high-load system services for a period of five years.

With an established transition and workflow handover process, Intellias was able to completely take over the project within three months of signing a contract. Our cooperation is now full speed ahead, and we are providing managed services for the development and maintenance of software applications that are mission-critical for our client’s back-office operations:

• Data warehouse management
• Data visualization and analysis
• Campaign management
• Customer relations management
• Business process automation
• Collaborative software

Our high-load system development services include configuring systems, creating integration modules, and changing current modules to make our client’s back-office applications more responsive to business needs.

The back-office software ecosystem of the telecom company is extraordinarily complex and dynamic, so change requests (CRs) are an integral part of the development process for this project. Our service agreement with the client defines three CR complexity levels: low, medium, and high. The number of CRs at each level is budgeted in advance for every subsystem per quarter. However, this number depends on business needs and can be recalculated with no change in the monthly cost. For example, one large CR for the data warehouse management system equals two medium CRs or five small CRs.

Intellias deals with CRs that relate to:

• Changing business logic and maintaining the data pipeline
• Integrating existing systems to exchange data in synchronous and asynchronous modes
• Automating customer relationship processes
• Configuring financial and analytical reports

In providing maintenance services, Intellias ensures that all IT systems and software applications meet stated performance parameters. Depending on our client’s high-load systems requirements, we adhere to one of three service level agreements (SLAs):

• Gold with 24/7 support and 99.95% system availability
• Silver with 24/7 support and 99.8% system availability
• Bronze with 9/5 support and 99% system availability

High-load system service levels define timeframes for reaction, recovery, and resolution of requests depending on their severity.

To support a strong relationship with the client, Intellias has implemented a transparent communication framework that ensures the common focus and alignment of all stakeholders. Based on typical Agile processes, the framework allows for early detection of risks and issues and addressing them quickly at different managerial and engineering levels.

Business outcome

By leveraging Intellias’ unique Managed Services delivery model, our client was able to access scalable process expertise and gained the confidence to reallocate their most critical resources to focus on strategic priorities.

As cooperation with Intellias is based on a fixed price approach, the company benefits from predictable expenses and reliable service outcomes. Well-defined SLAs and KPIs allow for tracking processes and identifying weaknesses in internal controls. In this way, we are constantly improving the performance of the client’s IT department by promptly identifying and addressing operational deficiencies.

Intellias has become an integral component of the company’s IT operations and has set the stage for a long-term partnership. Owning full responsibility for the client’s back-office high-load systems, we derive valuable insights into the company’s business context and needs. Thus, we can see potential challenges and solve them with tailored solutions by drawing on our deep technical expertise in developing telecom software.