Post-Acquisition Network Consolidation
A leading Telco provider in Brazil acquired two other relevant competitors in recent years to enforce their presence in all regions of the country and to gain additional market share. The operation demanded a multi-year project (4+ years) to merge network topologies, services and capabilities, and to sunset legacy network components and devices, while increasing network capacity to enable the 5G rollout and address organic network expansion needs.
Encora’s Professional Services team partnered with the client to augment their capabilities in network services, covering distinct aspects of an end-to-end solution: network engineering, network design, device homologation, deployment, and project coordination.
As a result, Encora’s teams worked in a challenging ecosystem composed of 10,000+ devices in the network (mostly Nokia, Cisco and Juniper), and delivered:
- Engineering and implementation of new Access and Core multi-layer topologies based on Nokia devices.
- Deployed network functions such as Route Reflectors, Virtual Route Reflector, Broadband Remote Access Server, Provider Edge, Mobile Backhaul, Core PS, Core CS, Core Internet.
- Implementation of the following services: BGP, IS-IS, MPLS, OSPF, Flowspec, RPKI, Netflow, Netconf, SNMP, OAM, IPv4, IPv6, VRRP, HSRP, Policy based routing, VLAN, VLAN tagging, Flexible Vlan tagging.
- Nokia NSP (Multi-vendor Element Management System) implementation in the client environment – from deployment to assisted operations.
- Controlled swap of network devices with limited user and service impact (cold and hot swap).
- Nightly deployments and day-after support. Coordination of multiple projects to meet the requirements on physical and logical networking infrastructure.
Highly available network links in locomotives
One of the largest railway operators in Brazil was responsible for a nationwide project composed of multiple tracks and, initially, more than 300 locomotives, each equipped with multiple network technologies such as satellite, 4G/LTE, WiFi and radio P2P.
The project’s challenges included setting up and operating a secure and resilient communication between locomotives and backend systems that resided in a central Data Center. Data exchanged with locomotives was essential for network health monitoring and to enable use cases for the Industry 4.0 and IoT.
Encora delivered Professional Services in Networking, partnered with device vendors and Telco operators. We’ve assembled a team of experts in Telco for handling the devices and network in place, and leveraged our Accelerator technology - Encora Network Monitoring - to collect, store, consolidate and visualize metrics extracted from the routers running on trains.
As a result, Encora delivered a single pane of glass view of the locomotives, that allowed the team and our client to inspect each and every locomotive’s multi-link, redundant connectivity and performance status. Troubleshooting efforts went down from hours to a couple of minutes followed by an increase of monitoring coverage to 100% of the installed links, and reports got just one click away from the user.
Evolving Processes and Cultural Shift
Our client, a multinational vendor of technology solutions for the Telecommunications and consumer sectors, has a global presence and its IP Network Engineering division was delivering a services contract for the Integration, Deployment, Migration and Operation of network devices in one of the largest Brazilian telecommunications operators with solutions for 4G, 5G, optical fiber, cloud, and many others, where there was a lack of control of network environments and plenty of sub-optimized processes.
Aside from the daily operational tasks, the key challenge was to make the necessary changes to processes and even to their culture, removing ingrained habits and influencing the adoption of revamped processes and better tools.
Encora’s team mapped the existing processes in place between our client and the telco involved, bringing to light bottlenecks in each value stream, and suggesting actions to decrease the friction between silos and optimize deliverables.
With evolved processes and a cultural shift in our client’s IP Network Engineering, Encora’s Professional Services team raised the bar and help our client achieve their desired outcomes in a much more effective way.
As a result, from actions carried out by Encora, there was a significant increment in the visibility and predictability of request handling, thus adding to superior quality and performance to the entire value stream.
Access Request Process Digitalization
A global organization, leading vendor of hardware, software and services for Telecom operators, needed to optimize the interaction with one of its main customers, a large Telco in LatAm: the process of requesting physical and logical access to the sites was disorganized, bureaucratic and full of flaws, leading to wastes for all involved parties. A need for transformation was evident and aligned with their digitization and optimization corporate goals.
Encora consolidated an operations team to perform access requests, analyze and manage the transition state of these requests, and a development team to work on optimizations. As a result, we:
- Redesigned, documented and optimized access request flows, supported by technology, resulting in the elimination of Excel spreadsheets and agility in requests.
- Centralized all information about access requests by instituting a portal for registration and monitoring every request.
Implemented data-driven decision-making processes, through a BI platform and dashboards. - Delivered a solution that was flexible enough to be enabled across different areas of the operation with minimal effort.
- Delivered a lightweight, scalable process with visibility for our client and their customer (operator).
Transforming Telecommunication Delivery through Data-Driven Management
In a close partnership with a global telecommunications network vendor, Encora has played a leading role in driving improvements in network change management for major Telecom Operators in Latin America. Confronted by the complexity of our clients' operations, Encora identified a critical requirement to streamline processes. Within network change management, steps such as demand coordination, MOP (Method of Procedure) design and execution, and day-after analysis all demanded increased performance visibility to enhance the overall operational workflow.
To address existing limitations, Encora transitioned towards a more data-driven approach, significantly enhancing visibility and performance within network operations with an innovative demand coordination and accountability system.
Encora's solution included an Automation Panel, Failure Tracking, comprehensive Failure Details, and crucial Mitigation Suggestions. Developed in Microsoft Power BI and leveraging data from various sources such as Jira, ITSM tools, and the client's in-house tools, these innovative features empowered our team to automate several tasks, effortlessly track failures, conduct in-depth failure analysis, and enhance its success rate.
Encora's and the telco network vendor's proactive interventions yielded excellent outcomes. Significant improvements were achieved in terms of team alignment and efficiency. Leveraging the advantages of a data-driven approach and comprehensive digitalization of processes, Encora identified manual processes suitable for digitization, enforced improved toolchain usage, and facilitated service differentiations based on volume and complexity. Clients reaped the rewards of these enhancements through streamlined processes, reduced risks associated with end-user impacts related to network changes, and the ability to achieve faster and consistent rollouts.
