putting customers firstresources-business.telus.com/cms/files/files/000/000/058/... ·...
TRANSCRIPT
Putting customers first.AgilIT™ hosted application solicits network
feedback right from the device.
TELUS’ Technology Strategy Team developed the TNE application as an innovative way to solicit customer feedback
on network experiences. The tech strategy team needed a reliable, robust solution to host the application without
compromising the planned launch date or anticipated adoption scale. TELUS AgilIT Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) fit
the bill. Able to bring up virtual machines in two days, the tech strategy team got the capacity required to complete
intensive testing, go to market quickly as planned and support initial high volume downloads and ongoing operations.
TELUS Technology Strategy team accelerates launch of the TELUS Network Experience (TNE) application, meets
launch day performance requirements and supports ongoing scale.
Meeting Customer First priorities
TELUS has a company-wide commitment to delighting
customers – getting better every day by listening
to their needs. Leveraging customer feedback,
TELUS can generate new ideas to improve systems,
policies and processes with the goal of enhancing
the customer experience. TNE is one of those ideas.
Designed to give customers a voice, users download
the application on to their mobile devices and submit
network issue reports automatically. In addition, they
receive tips about device usage and updates about
network fixes and network service improvements.
“TNE, as a concept, was born from our corporate
Customer First initiative,” says Dan MacDonald,
Product Manager, Network Services at TELUS.
“We targeted the user experience from a network
perspective, enabling users to submit network
degradation issues automatically. We’re the only
Canadian carrier inviting customers to participate
in the experience of network performance, which
sets us apart. For us, it’s a way to “crowd source”
network improvements, using direct customer input to
accelerate prioritization of fixes in the near term and
plan site builds in the long term.”
A need for infrastructure flexibility
When Prashanth Dappula, Design Specialist, TELUS
Technology Strategy Team, builds applications, he
accounts for the stringent hosting requirements set
forth by the TELUS Business Transformation Unit (BT).
However, BT’s operating system, application system
and database requirements didn’t suit the functionality
envisioned for TNE. Having built the application on
a specific middleware platform, Dappula recognized
that complying with BT’s requirements would have
added six months to the development cycle to replace
the middleware. Dappula’s mandate was to get this
application to market as soon as possible while
ensuring data residency in Canada, so he needed to
explore other options.
After doing some research and connecting with
TELUS’ Cloud and Hosted Services team, Dappula
chose TELUS AgilIT VPC, TELUS’ Infrastructure-as-a-
Service solution. With easy, quick access to compute
and storage resources, Dappula avoided the time
and cost associated with procuring, provisioning and
configuring hardware to support the chosen application
platform. In addition, he was able to leverage TELUS
AgilIT VPC for both development and production,
© 2013 TELUS. 13_00299-02
For more information on how you can leverage the cloud as a sourcing strategy for strategy-oriented IT
that drives the business, visit telus.com/cloud
gaining the capability to test scale according to usage
rates anticipated upon launch. Having this capability
eliminated the costs of over-provisioning as well as the
configuration and installation risks that can come with a
“go live” event.
“We received the details for logging in within a day,
and I was able to configure the virtual machines and
bring them online within two days,” says Dappula.
“With browser-based hardware capabilities, I could
start, stop, create or replicate virtual machines with a
few clicks, so we could deploy and test new versions
of the application as the project progressed. It was
critical to gauge how intensely we could scale, so we
based our user acceptance and performance tests on
simulations with 14 issue reports per second. When
that level of intensity exceeded our compute capacity,
we adjusted the processing power and memory
accordingly. It happened seamlessly, within hours.”
Tangible network improvements
TELUS launched TNE in February 2013. Already,
adoption is ahead of schedule, with downloads one
third from target. And TNE data is delivering on the
application’s goal of helping to prioritize fixes. Creston,
British Columbia provides an excellent example. TNE
had compiled multiple reports of “no signal” and “poor
voice quality,” which were supported by network KPIs.
There was already a planned upgrade to increase
capacity of the Creston HSPA site, but the network
engineering team accelerated it by several weeks to
address TNE feedback. TELUS was also able to push
out a news story via TNE to users in that area: “Hey
Creston BC! We’ve recently upgraded a tower in your
area. This change will improve your wireless signal
quality and resolve the service issues that have been
reported. Thanks for your feedback and for using our
TELUS Network Experience app!”
“TELUS AgilIT VPC helped us achieve our objectives
on a few different fronts,” says MacDonald. “The
flexibility helped us host the application as it was built,
without the complexity of replacing the middleware.
We tested the upper limits of usage behaviours with
guaranteed computing power, so launch was flawless.
And we have the inherent scalability to support our
target number of downloads and issue submissions.
But most importantly, we met the strategic priorities of
our Customer First Program by getting this application
to market quickly with robust functionality so that we
can use customer feedback to fix issues and eventually
plan for future capacity. TELUS AgilIT VPC contributed
directly to TELUS being the first provider to crowd
source network improvements.”
IaaS offers virtualized servers, storage and network
resources delivered as a service from a purchase
pool of compute infrastructure to support on demand
provisioning for development and testing, short
projects or to address seasonal requirements.