Page 60 - SAMENA Trends - July-September 2024

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

in the region. On that front, African databased-agnostic digital BSS. To run our without investing in network expansion,
telcos have been traditionally relying on billing system, CSPs can choose any core new RAN components, and licenses
international telecom vendors known for DBMS that works best for them in terms immediately. In addition to increasing the
costly licenses, expensive services, and of their budget and overall IT strategy, network efficiency, one of our customers
long waiting time for modification requests. such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, or even our is using Nexign RCAF to improve the
The ultimate result is the increased price of own enterprise-grade RDBMS based on control over the quality of experience for
service for both end users and enterprises. PostgreSQL — Nexign Nord. its high-paying subscribers. If the network
Furthermore, many local communications is congested, RCAF and network policies
service providers (CSPs) have long-lasting Open-source solutions are often associated ensure premium customers are unaffected.
relationships with one or several specific with a lack of reliable support, security, The software for 4G/5G network functions
vendors — as a result, they are restricted and fault tolerance problems — these are can be based on open-source technologies
in their technological choices and have to critical requirements for any carrier-grade without compromised performance,
build new services on siloed grounds. system. To address these issues, we flexibility, and reliability. This year, one of
adhere to three important principles. First, the leading CSPs in Eastern Europe, serving
The software for 4G/5G before including any open-source product a multi-million subscriber base, deployed
our Oracle-free Nexign Policy Management
in our IT stack, we conduct its thorough
network functions can be internal functional and non-functional for dynamic policy management in 4G
based on open-source audit. Second, we guarantee extended and 5G networks. The project has shown
technologies without com- support for the client. Finally, we refine that the performance of Nexign PCRF
exceeds the replaced solution from a
open-source solutions to confirm that their
promised performance, security and availability parameters meet global PCRF vendor by 50%. As a result,
flexibility, and reliability. the CSP’s requirements. This approach lets the CSP could significantly reduce TCO by
us ensure that we develop reliable products
lowering hardware requirements and future
This year, one of the lead- that can be trusted by CSPs while reducing investments in the network equipment.
ing CSPs in Eastern Europe, their costs and minimizing lock-in risks.
serving a multi-million sub- For example, we have been migrating BSS Conclusion: Why Africa Needs Commercial
Open-Source Solutions
scriber base, deployed our components of one of the leading European African countries have tremendous poten-
Oracle-free Nexign Policy CSPs from Oracle DBMS to Nexign Nord tial, and most of them are on their way to
economic and technological sovereignty.
RDBMS. The goal was to reduce our client’s
Management for dynamic dependency on imported software and The development of the digital sector is one
policy management in 4G improve its technological agility. The CSP of the key challenges for regional states,
and telecom forms the basis for building a
serves tens of millions of geographically
and 5G networks. The proj- distributed subscribers, so their key digital economy. In this context, local CSPs
ect has shown that the per- requirement was to avoid any service should consider ways to reduce connectivi-

formance of Nexign PCRF interruption and impact on customer ty costs. One of such strategies is to obtain
experience during the migration. Based on
software from alternative vendors, as di-
exceeds the replaced solu- the project results, Nexign estimated that versification allows market players to stay
tion from a global PCRF Tier 1-3 CSPs could reduce costs on third- afloat in these challenging times.
party licenses by 10 times when shifting
vendor by 50%. from expensive DBMSs like Oracle to open- The industry needs a solid foundation, and
source-based alternatives like Nexign Nord. local market players should carefully
One of the most expensive parts of vendor For data synchronization between Oracle analyze potential challenges and consider
solutions is the cost of included third- and Nexign Nord and quick rollback without them while selecting software vendors. The
party licenses, such the ones for hardware, data loss in case of accidents, we used our good news is that today, many technological
virtualization, operating systems, and equivalent of Oracle GoldenGate — Nexign players in the telecom market offer
DBMSs. According to our estimation, they Data Integrator, a universal low-code ETL+ innovative yet cost-efficient and open
can account for up to 40-50% of the final platform for data transformation. solutions for fast and reliable business
price. However, most of these solutions, growth. Open-source software allows CSPs
for example, Oracle DBMS, have open- Along with the obvious cost savings from to save on licensing and maintenance fees.
source alternatives on the market. Open- using open-source technologies, there are Besides, it usually requires less hardware
source analogs help reduce the total cost other optimization opportunities that CSPs power and helps save on hardware costs.
of ownership (TCO) while also minimizing sometimes overlook, such as RCAF. RCAF Open-source software is agile and can be
vendor lock-in risks for a CSP. At Nexign, collects data on congested base stations adjusted to the CSP’s unique needs more
we have been actively utilizing open-source and affected subscribers and then sends it easily than proprietary software. Finally, it
technologies in our solutions for a long to PCRF to optimize network performance. offers freedom from vendor lock-in,
time. For example, last year we announced As a result, the CSP can manage minimizing related risks and advancing
a new generation of our Nexign BSS, a congestion issues at a software level flexibility and control.

60 JULY-SEPTEMBER 2024