Software Engineering Connect

undefined. 7 May 2024. Software Engineering Connect.

undefined. [image]. Customer Update. Overview of current customers Distribution of ADB SWE people Individual account updates.

[Audio] Let’s start with a distribution of the Software Engineering people across our current customers which includes all permanent employees and contractors. From this high-level view you can clearly see that Vodacom is currently by far our biggest client with over 80% of our Software engineering team working on projects with them. Vodacom will always be a very key customer for us especially since we have a long and interesting journey with them that started back in 1996 and remains pivotal. That said there is also a big drive to expand into other areas and other clients. Our existing customers are depicted here and we anticipate a lot more will be added during the next year..

[Audio] Before I go into more detail on the Vodacom projects we are involved in let’s start with some of the other clients we are working with. The first one is I-K-U-E although still in the Telco space a very interesting company indeed. I-K-U-E is a customer data platform designed by telcos for telcos. Designed specifically for the telecoms industry this AI-powered solution stitches together all the valuable customer data in one place in real-time for the first time. By providing a single genuine view of the customer Ikue enables telecom marketers to target the right customer at the right time with the right message to deliver truly personalized customer experiences and drive growth. Our team has successfully onboarded a new client and significantly improved technical team efficiency quality and inter-communications from an operations perspective. Additionally we have created reusable tools such as scripts and pre-configured Postman collections for the entire team’s benefit. Our efforts have gone a long way in stabilizing the product making it more reliable and efficient for its users..

[Audio] Overview: With sita (State Information Technology Agency) we are busy with a Cloud Integrated Development Environment & DevOps project to implement Gitlab Redhat Openshift & Atlassian suite. Achievements: ??? Innovate: Optimise: ??? Transform: ??? Challenges: ???.

[Audio] We are also engaged with various other clients such as: Implementing Anomaly Detection Pipeline processes at Hungry Lion to identify outlying data affecting Kronos predictions accuracy. Configuring a Microsoft Cloud-Based Enterprise Integration Platform at the University of Western Cape. Providing A-W-S Support & Maintenance at Finglobal. Offering Support for critical mainframe skills on the Hogan Core Banking Platform at ABSA. Providing architectural skills at Santam. Developing a Mobility Centre Booking add-on for the Remedy Help Desk system at Standard Bank..

[Audio] Now to Vodacom our biggest client. Our Software Engineering Practice has been with Vodacom for over 28 years. At present we have a team of 256 professionals dedicated to developing maintaining and providing support for 15 distinct application stacks within Vodacom. Our services include various areas such as Architecture Business/Systems analysis Operational Support and Development which Quality Assurance and Project Management. We take great pride in the fact that our team has recently been honored with 17 Vodacom star awards which serves as a testament to the exceptional work we consistently deliver for Vodacom..

[Audio] This slide provides an overview of the various application stacks at Vodacom that we are involved in. As you can see we have extensive experience and operate in multiple functional areas within Vodacom utilizing a wide range of technology stacks. In the essence of time I will focus on a few projects today and talk more about what the project entails what we do recent achievements and what innovative stuff we do and plan to do..

[Audio] Let’s start with iCAP. iCAP which stands for integrated Customer Administration and Provisioning system is a platform stack created by Altron to meet Vodacom's business needs by managing Vodacom Subscribers and offering real-time management across multiple Systems. iCAP handles a large number of transactions on a daily basis. It interfaces with more than 130 network elements handles over 130 000 prepaid activations daily and processes 8 500 S-I-M Swaps daily. We have modernized and implemented Inventory management using microservices technology. Recently we transitioned U-I-M to the same Evolve stack where we are currently operating in parallel to eventually decommission UIM. We also achieve less than 1 hour of downtime per month through continuous blue-green deployments. Currently in Evolve we are in the process of implementing Service Fulfillment & Activation (S-F-A--) to enhance and consolidate order orchestration enabling better scalability. Our goal is to migrate the processing and provisioning of contract and prepaid mobile orders to Evolve by implementing a consolidated S-C-P (Service Configuration Provisioning) replacing sasi and phasing out the existing ICAP DB work order generator. One of the main challenges we are encountering in this area is to streamline team structures and maintain a high PI delivery cadence with reduced budgets..

[Audio] Event Rating is a micro-billing solution used across Vodacom's V-A-S executing via payment gateways and is at the core of any additional services offered by Vodacom. This real time environment processes an average of 900000 transactions per day. The majority of the platform has been modernized processing has been enhanced and revenue has been increased in specific areas through Microbilling. Due to the high demand on this platform we consistently deploy up to 3 releases per week. To improve event rating we will be implementing proactive monitoring and alerting mechanisms to decrease incident response and resolution times. Additionally we plan to enhance the delivery cadence of demand management. In the case of ER if we successfully secure the R-F-P we plan to complete the full architecture transition to Microservices. This will enhance scalability and enable simplified deployments ultimately reducing planned downtime. Event rating is currently up for renewal through R-F-P and we anticipate hearing the outcome within the next month..

[Audio] Vodacom utilizes Big Data and C-V-M hyper personalization to provide customers with enhanced value through the use of Data Science and Machine Learning. This not only benefits customers but also optimizes revenue for the company. Vodacom's Big Data and Analytic platform plays a crucial role in delivering effective and efficient machine learning applications. It supports Vodacom's digital transformation and simplifies the Technology stack. The Big Data Technical Delivery team collaborates closely with the business to manage and prioritize their demands. They also develop advanced analytics capabilities to facilitate decision-making influence actions and drive positive business outcomes. These services are delivered in partnership with a team of data scientists and can be used in various business environments. Through the hyper-personalization of offers to customers Big Data has achieved significant revenue growth. Our recent accomplishments include successfully implementing Score Card Productionisation starting the migration of M-C-C-M to R-T-S launching the 5G upgrade recommender integrating Huawei data for surls pipelines and creating a tool to identify any problems with the ingestion pipeline. The C-V-M team was also recognized by Terrence last month for completing the migration project from the old architecture of the gifting engine to the C-V-M cloud architecture. Regarding Big Data our goal is to finish the migration of M-C-C-M to R-T-S by the end of Q1. This will lead to cost savings on licensing and provide additional capabilities to Vodacom by moving from I-B-M to an in-house Big Data solution. This migration will offer more flexibility in developing ML models..

[Audio] Vobill is an I-T system for the Commissioning and provisioning of Vodacom Sim Cards acting as a mediation and administration system between Vodacom and Service Providers/Dealers. It handles SIM/Starter Packs Virtual Recharge Vouchers Electronic Recharge Vouchers Physical Recharge Voucher orders as well as Subscriber Prepaid Recharge and Prepaid Billing information. The platform processes over 500 000 S-I-M cards daily and commissions more than R-5-0-0 million prepaid vouchers monthly. With Vobill we successfully mitigated the emailing risk of the system resulting in cost savings on manual controls. We introduced the capability to sell Vodacom vouchers to Mr Price customers allowing for commission earnings. Additionally we enabled eSIM capability in the market developed a daily dealer report for all V-R-M-S orders and enhanced the user interface experience. The order management system will enhance stock availability reduce manual work and lower infrastructure costs. Lastly we implemented an automated system for managing system and database passwords. Our goal for Vobill is to automate patching through D-C-A to decrease security threats and vulnerabilities. We are also upgrading the .Net framework version to support the Oracle 19c upgrade. The Vobill platform plays a critical role in provisioning for the business but it requires modernization. The technology is becoming difficult to maintain and we need to improve the user experience and browser support. Additionally we must address security concerns and simplify platform management. This system is of utmost concern as it may soon pose performance risks. It is crucial to begin the modernization journey now to prevent serious issues in the future..

[Audio] Nemo (Network Monitoring) is a software developed by Altron for the South African Law Enforcement Agency (L-E-A--) to create cases as required by the courts. It utilizes Vodacom call data records data to monitor subscriber activity on the network. Through A-W-S optimization we managed to save Vodacom more than R 3.6 million annually by reducing cloud consumption. We upgraded from abinitio & Silverlight to AWS ETL for cost optimization resulting in a monthly spending reduction of over 65% without compromising performance. Our focus for Nemo is to enhance the processing time for saps case requests even further. Previously cases that took 3 weeks to process are now completed in just 4 hours while also improving the User Experience. Going forward we will introduce Eppix Reporting Mechanisms to streamline user experiences by consolidating all court-related information in one place eliminating the need to navigate through multiple systems..

[Audio] Overview: C-V-M hyper personalize offers to customers in support of Big Data by using Data Science and Machine Learning to add more value and boost revenue for Vodacom Commercial side. Our C-V-M team helps Vodacom develop personalised products and services for their customers to maximize profits at an individual customer level. The goal of C-V-M is to move towards mass customized offers and price discrimination based on Willingness to pay Current customer value based on their profiles & segmentation and Churn and migration risks. Our C-V-M team assists Vodacom in creating personalized products and services for customers to maximize profits on an individual level. The aim is to transition towards mass customized offers and price discrimination based on Willingness to pay Current customer value based on their profiles & segmentation and Churn and migration risks. We manage a large cloud environment with 52 E-C-2 instances multiple applications 10 tenants and 14 downstream systems to ensure high availability In Cvm we focused on reducing dopa Deal Volume resulting in fewer rejected claims improved N-P-S score and decreased dealer cancellations and upgrade reversals. We successfully integrated Pepkor U-S-S-D allowing Pepkor to sell Vodacom personalized bundles and opening up opportunities for future 3rd party integrations like MKOPA & Mobihive. Additionally we fulfilled the Summer requirements allowing the sharing of Vodabucks and Vouchers to boost upselling and generate more revenue. Recently the C-V-M team was recognized by Terrence for completing the migration project from the gifting engine legacy architecture to C-V-M cloud architecture. We have already migrated S-M-S WhatsApp & M-M-S to U-I-M (Unified Intelligent Messaging) in C-V-M and now we plan to move email as well to bring cost-saving benefits to Vodacom..

[Audio] Vodacom Financial Services is responsible for various areas within Vodacom including Lending Payments Insurance and more. Within V-F-S we have successfully implemented various efficiencies notably achieving a 60% decrease in P2 incidents and a 30% decrease in P3 incidents. We played a crucial role in the launch of Virtual Card executed changes for the Summer Campaigns and completed the M-V-A migration project to VodaPay. Furthermore we effectively onboarded Network International as an additional 3rd party Payments Services provider. Going forward our focus remains on continuous DevOps automation to enhance delivery times and overall quality..

[Audio] The Innovate Platform is an adapted edition of the Idea Trigger system developed by Altron specifically for Vodacom. This platform serves as a versatile tool for generating and implementing innovative ideas fostering collaboration and enhancing efficiency. It enables employees to contribute their ideas evaluate existing ones and participate in meaningful discussions all within a single platform. Towards the end of last year Innovate experienced a significant amount of noise. However we were able to address the performance and reliability concerns by working closely with our Altron Security team. Together we successfully resolved the N-A-M authentication issues for this platform. As a result we concluded the South Africa Africa and recently Vodafone European Hackathons with great success. I would like to share some recent feedback we received from Jannie van Zyl: “The platform has been tantamount to our successful Innovation Programme and Hackathons supporting our ambition of being a Tech Company delighting our customers with excellent customer experience and driving value to our business. This collaboration has ensured we can drive flexibility and proactiveness to meet user requirements.”.

[Audio] Other systems in Vodacom where we as Software Engineering are also engaged in but I won’t go into detail today are Revenue Assurance U-S-S-D Node to Node and Infinity..

[Audio] Overview: Vodacom's Fraud Forensics Team uses the Subscriber Activity Monitoring System (S-A-M-S-) to protect subscribers from fraud by detecting anomalies initiating actions like locking services and leveraging machine learning for better fraud detection. Margin Assurance managed by the Finance Operations Team designs risk management policies monitors control effectiveness addresses deficiencies detects revenue leakage and implements strategies to enhance profitability operating independently from business areas. Here we assist Vodacom with their Revenue Assurance Fraud detection and prevention within all divisions of Vodacom. We created an E-T-L (extract transform and load) pattern that comes with minimum A-W-S usage but processes huge volumes of data. Achievements: Revenue assurance includes the Margin Assurance Controls (or MAC). We implemented Vodapay controls for Store of Value where we are running so called ‘completeness checks’ on Bidvest against Alipay and we implemented Subscriber Balance Verification. And the Smart Capex project was a big success for cost optimisation. Transform For Revenue Assurance we are working on replacing R-A-I-D with A-W-S Serverless solution to reduce time to detect revenue leakage and fraud. People: ??? Challenges: ???.

[Audio] Overview: This platform is essential for delivering the successes of the summer campaign without the limitation of needing a smart phone. Our U-S-S-D Business analyst team support this essential platform and are responsible for U-S-S-D menus throughout Vodacom. People: ??? Challenges: Will be replaced by P-W-A.

[Audio] Overview: The Node to Node team plays a pivotal role in ensuring the alignment and accuracy between two core systems: I-C-A-P and EPPIX. The discrepancies between these systems can have significant repercussions particularly when it comes to subscriber billing and service provisioning. Their primary focus is to meticulously identify and rectify any inconsistencies between I-C-A-P and EPPIX. This includes instances where subscribers are billed in E-P-P-I-X for services not provisioned in I-C-A-P or vice versa. Such discrepancies not only lead to customer dissatisfaction but can also result in revenue loss for the organization. People: ???.

[Audio] Overview: Infinity provides A-P-I services for 3 downstream Vodacom environments The value chain consists of IRS [Infinity Replication Services (think golden gate) IDS [Infinity Data Services (think db and odi) and IMS [Infinity Microservices (think api’s)] Achievements: In Infinity we implemented a New Authentication System we automated the Metric Collections and we implemented Spring Config Server which improves the overall service architecture and performance. People: ??? Challenges: ???.