Ambition
Odido Netherlands (formerly T-Mobile Netherlands) had an 18-year-old billing system that struggled to keep up with its business needs. The system was hosted in a data center on an outdated version of Ericsson Billing, using unsupported databases and operating systems, which posed security risks. The upgrade was challenging, limiting Odido's ability to launch new billing features.
Odido's strategic vision is to modernize its applications, adopt a cloud-native approach, and transition to a microservices-based architecture. To achieve this, Odido aims to update its billing system and implement a pay-as-you-go Opex model for infrastructure. This scalable system would enable Odido to quickly adapt to market changes, manage increasing transaction volumes, and prepare for innovative products on 5G.
Odido aims to become a "Customer Champion" and lead the market. Consequently, the company seeks to implement all transformation programs, including this one, with high-quality standards and minimal disruption to business operations. Acknowledging the need to reduce customization and revise existing interfaces, Odido has established ambitious goals for both itself and the system integrator.
Action
Wipro strongly recommended the cloud-native Ericsson Billing platform hosted on AWS Cloud for its scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. Wipro took full ownership of the transformation, collaborating closely with Ericsson and Odido throughout the process. This ensured a single point of accountability, allowing potential risks to be identified and mitigated, and guaranteeing that the project was delivered with the highest quality.
By employing a big-bang approach (a comprehensive and immediate transition rather than a gradual implementation) to minimize disruptions, Wipro and Ericsson successfully migrated over 5 million customers in just one weekend. In the months preceding the migration, Wipro conducted more than 15 mock migrations and simultaneously tested both old and new systems to assess performance and data quality, while prioritizing compliance with all provisioning processes. Together with Odido’s business assurance team, Wipro performed parallel runs to identify discrepancies in customer invoices between the legacy and new billing systems. This thorough testing guaranteed a smooth and defect-free delivery, significantly lowering the risks of post-migration issues. It was crucial for Odido that the migration and business go-live occurred over the weekend to lessen the impact on operations. To achieve this, multiple rounds of technical migrations were conducted, and the runbook and migration processes were refined to align with Odido’s expectations.
Wipro rewrote all the legacy interfaces and replaced them with state-of-the-art interfaces in collaboration with Odido’s enterprise integration team. Wipro’s end-to-end testing covered critical areas such as system testing (evaluating the software's overall operations to ensure it meets the required standards), system integration testing (verifying that all system components work together as intended), regression testing (checking that new changes have not adversely affected existing functionalities), and non-functional testing (assessing aspects of the system such as performance, usability, and reliability). Wipro executed over 800 test scripts to ensure that all aspects of the system were thoroughly validated, guaranteeing stability, performance, and reliability in the new cloud environment.
Ambitions Realized
This program represents a significant milestone in Odido’s digital transformation. The ambitious goal set by Odido was achieved through a seamless migration over a weekend with minimal business disruption. The deliverables were of such high quality that no critical, high, or medium priority defects were reported during the aftercare period. Odido now utilizes a modern cloud-native billing system with a microservices architecture, enabling both horizontal and vertical scaling. Bill runs are completely automated to ensure the seamless delivery of invoices to Odido’s customers. The platform supports real-time reporting and monitoring to enhance customer service. The entire program was executed with exemplary precision, leading the CEO of Odido to describe it as “an open-heart surgery performed on an athlete while running.”
