Cloud Cost Optimization, licensing compliance & more for Emagine’s International platform on AWS Cloud
Challenge
Founded in 1998, Emagine International provides software and services that help telecommunications companies (telecoms) increase customer revenue and loyalty. The business is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with clients across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Emagine’s services include its RED (Real-time Event Decisioning).cloud – a platform that enables telecoms and other service providers to respond when customers experience events such as reaching limits on monthly mobile data allocations. RED.cloud delivers real-time streaming analytics and business rules to enable telecoms to execute these messages and interactions – such as inviting customers to purchase more data when they are reaching their data limits. Telecoms can use the platform to gain greater value from their assets, increase their ability to analyze customer behaviour, and continuously adjust interactions with customers in response to lessons learned from previous interactions.
“Whether a client has two million customers or 22 million, we can scale RED.cloud on AWS to deliver messages and interactions to those customers in less than 250 milliseconds.” – David Peters, Chief Executive Officer, Emagine International
Emagine traditionally deployed its software within telecoms’ on-premises environments. “Our key reason for taking this initial approach was that the cloud space was virtually nonexistent 15 years ago. Now, there have been various iterations of cloud-based infrastructure services,” says David Peters, chief executive officer at Emagine. With many telecoms planning to move their infrastructure to the cloud over the next five years, Emagine realized it needed to deploy the RED platform in the cloud to remain relevant to customers and prospects. In order to enable rapid decision-making and responses, the platform’s supporting infrastructure had to scale seamlessly and cost-effectively to support large, rapidly changing data volumes while also maintaining high availability.
Founded in 1998, Emagine International provides software and services that help telecommunications companies (telecoms) increase customer revenue and loyalty. The business is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with clients across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Emagine’s services include its RED (Real-time Event Decisioning).cloud – a platform that enables telecoms and other service providers to respond when customers experience events such as reaching limits on monthly mobile data allocations. RED.cloud delivers real-time streaming analytics and business rules to enable telecoms to execute these messages and interactions – such as inviting customers to purchase more data when they are reaching their data limits. Telecoms can use the platform to gain greater value from their assets, increase their ability to analyze customer behaviour, and continuously adjust interactions with customers in response to lessons learned from previous interactions.
“Whether a client has two million customers or 22 million, we can scale RED.cloud on AWS to deliver messages and interactions to those customers in less than 250 milliseconds.” – David Peters, Chief Executive Officer, Emagine International
Emagine traditionally deployed its software within telecoms’ on-premises environments. “Our key reason for taking this initial approach was that the cloud space was virtually nonexistent 15 years ago. Now, there have been various iterations of cloud-based infrastructure services,” says David Peters, chief executive officer at Emagine. With many telecoms planning to move their infrastructure to the cloud over the next five years, Emagine realized it needed to deploy the RED platform in the cloud to remain relevant to customers and prospects. In order to enable rapid decision-making and responses, the platform’s supporting infrastructure had to scale seamlessly and cost-effectively to support large, rapidly changing data volumes while also maintaining high availability.
Solution
Emagine International’s top priority was selecting a cloud service provider its customers could trust. One of RED.cloud’s initial deployments was for a telecom that had previously used Amazon Web Services (AWS) for another application. “AWS had the infrastructure and security that were acceptable to that provider, and it could scale up or down when necessary,” says Peters.
RED.cloud must make two decisions in under 250 milliseconds upon receiving telecom data: whether to engage the customer, and what offer to make. “When a customer is about to run out of data, we can text them an offer to purchase 200 MB for $2,” Peters explains. “If they agree, we provision the additional data in real time.”
During its cloud service evaluation, Emagine recognized the need for expert support in building and deploying its platform on AWS. AWS recommended Blue Crystal Solutions, citing its proven expertise in architecture, performance, security, implementations, licensing, and managed services—particularly with Oracle technologies powering Emagine’s platform.
Meeting Stringent Performance Targets
Blue Crystal Solutions provided consultancy in areas such as cost optimization, licensing, technology selection, and infrastructure design to meet performance and security demands. “Emagine’s requirements evolved, and we responded quickly,” says James Banister, associate marketing and business development manager at Blue Crystal Solutions. The team designed an AWS architecture using Availability Zones to meet high availability needs and stored over 11 TB of data in the first three months. “Our AWS implementation passed an independent telecom security audit with flying colors,” adds Banister.
Emagine runs a version of its platform in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to isolate sensitive resources while supporting public systems. Amazon EC2 with Amazon EBS powers servers running an Oracle database for analytics and a VoltDB database for real-time decisions. Amazon S3 handles Oracle data backups and archiving. Blue Crystal Solutions’ proprietary monitoring tool, BlueDiamond, integrates with Amazon CloudWatch for 24/7 alert management.
With AWS, RED.cloud can ingest several terabytes of telecom data in real time and handle large fluctuations in daily data volume.
Emagine International’s top priority was selecting a cloud service provider its customers could trust. One of RED.cloud’s initial deployments was for a telecom that had previously used Amazon Web Services (AWS) for another application. “AWS had the infrastructure and security that were acceptable to that provider, and it could scale up or down when necessary,” says Peters.
RED.cloud must make two decisions in under 250 milliseconds upon receiving telecom data: whether to engage the customer, and what offer to make. “When a customer is about to run out of data, we can text them an offer to purchase 200 MB for $2,” Peters explains. “If they agree, we provision the additional data in real time.”
During its cloud service evaluation, Emagine recognized the need for expert support in building and deploying its platform on AWS. AWS recommended Blue Crystal Solutions, citing its proven expertise in architecture, performance, security, implementations, licensing, and managed services—particularly with Oracle technologies powering Emagine’s platform.
Meeting Stringent Performance Targets
Blue Crystal Solutions provided consultancy in areas such as cost optimization, licensing, technology selection, and infrastructure design to meet performance and security demands. “Emagine’s requirements evolved, and we responded quickly,” says James Banister, associate marketing and business development manager at Blue Crystal Solutions. The team designed an AWS architecture using Availability Zones to meet high availability needs and stored over 11 TB of data in the first three months. “Our AWS implementation passed an independent telecom security audit with flying colors,” adds Banister.
Emagine runs a version of its platform in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to isolate sensitive resources while supporting public systems. Amazon EC2 with Amazon EBS powers servers running an Oracle database for analytics and a VoltDB database for real-time decisions. Amazon S3 handles Oracle data backups and archiving. Blue Crystal Solutions’ proprietary monitoring tool, BlueDiamond, integrates with Amazon CloudWatch for 24/7 alert management.
With AWS, RED.cloud can ingest several terabytes of telecom data in real time and handle large fluctuations in daily data volume.
Results
No bill shock with Cloud cost optimization
Emagine is also able to manage its costs proactively using AWS. “The cost of using the AWS Cloud varies in line with usage and demand. This gives us the flexibility to scale and enables us to optimize the cost of our RED.cloud solution,” said Peters. “In addition, by paying only for the AWS services we consume, we avoid large, upfront expenditure in infrastructure. Furthermore, our partnership with Blue Crystal Solutions enabled us to reduce the costs of implementation, transformation, and ongoing operations.”
No bill shock with Cloud cost optimization
Emagine is also able to manage its costs proactively using AWS. “The cost of using the AWS Cloud varies in line with usage and demand. This gives us the flexibility to scale and enables us to optimize the cost of our RED.cloud solution,” said Peters. “In addition, by paying only for the AWS services we consume, we avoid large, upfront expenditure in infrastructure. Furthermore, our partnership with Blue Crystal Solutions enabled us to reduce the costs of implementation, transformation, and ongoing operations.”