Rapid implementation 

Phase 1 of the implementation, which included mapping 25 record types, took just a few weeks, with less than a week dedicated to the MCI team learning how to use the software. According to Senior Manager of I.T. in  Chris Aher, Information Management and Engineering, “The software is so intuitive that the better you know your data, the less time it takes to learn the tool.” 

Increased processing efficiency

Developers create maps quickly and easily, ultimately speeding time to value and delivering immediate return on investment.

Ease of maintenance

MCI seeks cost-effective data conversion for millions of international call records; Pervasive provides the solution

At the time of this case study, MCI was a leader in business and residential communications services. The company had 20 million customers and delivered innovative, cost-effective advanced communications connectivity. In a given month, MCI collected over 500 millions international call detail records associated with tens of thousands of different international business agreements that arrive in various formats under a wide spectrum of business rules.

Because they stem from unique information sources, these phone switch records (called CDRs) are highly complex. MCI, therefore, needed a cost-effective solution that would help extract the data, convert it into a common format and load it into very large databases for international settlement purposes with other telecommunications companies around the world. Pervasive Data Integrator was the solution.

High volume of data in need of conversion; Cost effectiveness

In a given month, MCI collects over 500 millions international call detail records associated with tens of thousands of different international business agreements that arrive in various formats under a wide spectrum of business rules. Because they stem from unique information sources, these phone switch records (called CDRs) are highly complex. Therefore, MCI needed a cost-effective solution that would help extract the data, convert it into a common format and load it into very large databases for international settlement purposes with other telecommunications companies around the world.

The integration challenge MCI was faced with is not unusual in the telecom industry, as backend enterprise resource planning (ERP) and traffic settlement systems unique to the telecom industry must be able to connect to and understand this data, which travels via international networks and is connected to any one of tens of thousands changing business agreements, and tied to a complex set of business rules. MCI sought an integration partner that would guarantee efficient data translations from source format to common destination format in order to preserve data integrity, consistency and accuracy for efficient settlement and traffic analysis purposes.

Dealing with hundreds of millions of records a month, MCI also found that internally hand coding integration solutions in their old mainframe processing was unnecessarily expensive in terms of developer time. Therefore they sought a more cost effective alternative to mainframe processing and found it in Pervasive Software.

Pervasive Data Integrator migrates great amounts of data from mainframe to SQL environment

Using Pervasive Data Integrator, MCI was able to migrate large processes off expensive mainframes and into a distributed Intel/Microsoft SQL server processing environment, providing a much more economic and easily maintainable solution to handle data translations on a low cost processor. Pervasive helped MCI both optimize their existing IT investments and quickly deliver accurate international traffic settlement data to multiple carriers in multiple countries. Pervasive technology easily handles episodic, complex conversions into ASCII.

Aher adds, “MCI developers are thrilled by the ease with which they were able to create integration process maps. They consider Pervasive’s solution a powerful and critical technology in their arsenal to reduce IT costs and re-allocate valuable developer resources because it is so easy to maintain, easy to use and easy to install.” Pervasive also handles the conversation of raw phone switch data, which arrives at MCI in a very esoteric format called “nibbles,” translating it efficiently into server based data types that are easily handled by the database system. Before installing Pervasive software, MCI was using a large team of developers to write labor-intensive custom code. With Pervasive Data Integrator, MCI has significantly reduced the team size, freeing up valuable development resources for other projects. Pervasive provides a flexible and easy to maintain solution, even as phone companies change their phone switch data regularly. MCI’s system engineers can now keep the data synchronized, reducing the time it takes their developers to code for new voice switch data formats from 3 months to 1 month.

Data conversion with Pervasive frees up development resources

Using Pervasive Data Integrator, MCI has significantly reduced the team size, freeing up valuable development resources for other projects. Pervasive provides a flexible and easy to maintain solution, even as phone companies change their phone switch data regularly. MCI’s system engineers can now keep the data synchronized, reducing the time it takes their developers to code for new voice switch data formats from 3 months to 1 month.

By deploying three integration engines, Pervasive helped MCI migrate large processes off expensive mainframes and into distributed processing environments, both optimizing existing IT investments and quickly delivering accurate international voice traffic settlement data to multiple carriers in multiple countries.

Pervasive brings cost effectiveness to MCI

Together with Microsoft and Pervasive, MCI has drastically cut mainframe-processing costs by 40 percent, reducing overall daily CPU processing time from 12 hours to 5 hours for the traffic settlement process. 

Senior Manager of I.T. in  Chris Aher, Information Management and Engineering, concludes, “It has been a pleasure working with Pervasive. On the few occasions where we have contacted tech support the Pervasive team has been excellent. Our technology team said the Pervasive trainer was the best IT trainer they’ve ever had - not only did he get us up and running quickly, but he empowered the team to design project based solutions for pressing business needs.”

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