Case Study: Connectivity Software Solution Development

Summary

Industry: Telecom, IoT.
Location: London, the U.K.
Duration of the project: Since 2019 – to present.
Size of the project team: 20 experts.
Software product: Rater System, a service cost calculation system.
Expertise delivered: Dedicated Development Team, Custom Software Development, Architecture Design.

Challenge

Our client, the Israeli Telecom technology vendor BD Innovations, was acquired by the UK-based innovative connectivity technology provider floLIVE.

floLIVE develops the world’s first Software-Defined Connectivity (SDC) platform that represents a fully automated, converged, Сloud-native connectivity solution for IoT services, enabling worldwide connectivity. The platform includes a billing and rating system.

Prior to the acquisition of BD Innovations by floLIVE, SPD Technology had been engaged in developing BD Innovations’ Business Support System (BSS) platform for Telecom operators. After becoming familiar with our dedicated team and their competences, floLIVE decided to start working with us. Our new client engaged us to bring their newly acquired system in accordance with their vision.

The floLIVE platform provides a full suite of IoT connectivity solutions for businesses, including:

• An IoT Connectivity Platform.
• A Cloud-managed Mobile Private Network (LTE/5G).
• A Global IoT Network as-a-service (LTE/5G).
• A Cloud-based BSS, built for IoT.

floLIVE wanted us to streamline and expand their platform. In particular, we were tasked with achieving a close-to-instant speed of response under high loads.

Solution

To implement the project, SPD Technology allocated a project team of senior 3 backend and 1 front-end developers. In 2020, we already had 12 experts working on the project. Due to the COVID-19-related budget constraints, our project team shrank to the initial 3–4 experts. However, In the first quarter of 2021, SPD Technology’s project team saw major growth. Currently, it consists of 20 dedicated experts, and, namely:

• 3 Team Leads/Software Architects
• 2 Front-end developers
• 3 Back-end Tech Leads
• 10 Back-end developers
• 1 DevOps
• 1 QA Automation Expert

After a thorough analysis of the client’s system, our team decided to build the Rater System that constituted the core of the client’s BSS system afresh to align the solution with the modern technological standards.

Our project team worked in direct collaboration with our client’s Solution Architect and Technical Director. Furthermore, to gain an in-depth understanding of the numerous diverse industry-specific nuances of the functionality we needed to develop, our experts conducted a number of meetings with the Solution Architect and analyzed a variety of use cases jointly with him. As a result, we’ve been able to capture and implement with excellence even the subtlest nuances of the functions we needed to implement.

While the technology stack for the project was initially defined by the client, our experts proactively proposed some other technologies that were more optimal for the functionality at hand. For instance, we insisted on using Kotlin, Kafka, PostgreSQL, and Spring Framework, all of which have proven to be excellent choices.

Moreover, our opting for Apache Ignite in-memory grid has increased the system’s performance from 200 to 2300 requests per second. However, we decided to keep optimizing the system’s performance and employed Hazelcast for this purpose. This has allowed us to increase the solution’s performance by more than a factor of 2 – to 5000+ requests per second. While the optimization of the response time for an event by 1-2 ms is frequently regarded as game-changing in the Telco industry, we’ve managed to reduce the SMS event time from 90ms to a mere 30ms, or, even, as little as 2ms for events other than the first one in multi-sessions.

During the project’s implementation, its scope got significantly expanded: based on the quality of our intermediate deliverables, floLIVE entrusted us with refactoring and re-writing several more of the system’s modules.

A very significant challenge we encountered was meeting a stringent deadline associated with the requirements by the clients’ investors and customers: around 30% of the functionality was delivered by us within just 3 months in January-March 2021.

Currently, SPD Technology’s project team is engaged in further expanding the client’s application by adding the functionality requested by their new clients.

Technology Solution

• Kotlin
• Gradle
• Spring Framework
• PostgreSQL
• Hazelcast
• Kafka
• Elastic Search

Methodology, Tools

• API first
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
• Agile

Result

We have delivered the Rater System of the client’s platform on time and within the budget.

Our client floLIVE has been impressed with our work, commitment, and proactive attitude. Based on the project’s outcomes, the client has entrusted us with streamlining and expanding their connectivity platform’s device management, customer management, and IoT modules, as well as their billing system for corporate clients.

The number of floLIVE’s B2B clients using the company’s connectivity platform has been steadily growing. Recently, the platform has started being used as a white-label product by a major Western ICT provider.

Testimonials

“It is almost a year since we started to work with SPD Technology. During this short period, I found a great team of professionals that assisting us to develop and deliver different components of our product. The most important for us was to be able to scale up our development team fast enough but without compromising on the experience and knowledge level of the team. SPD Technology achieved to build a very professional, dedicated team much quicker than expected!”
— Boris Shagalov, Co-Founder, VP R&D and SW Delivery, floLIVE