Zain Sudan is a cellular service supplier in Sudan, serving 23 million clients. It’s a subsidiary of Zain Group, a number one cellular and information providers operator within the Center East and North Africa.
The issue:
In early 2024, Sudan was plunged into an escalating civil battle that triggered a nationwide cellular connectivity blackout. This left hundreds of thousands of Sudanese residents with out entry to important communication or cellular cash providers, deepening the humanitarian and financial disaster. Three of the nation’s MNOs, together with Zain Sudan, have been unable to revive these providers, leaving communities remoted and susceptible throughout a 40-day blackout interval.
The disaster was monumental in scale, affecting dozens of hundreds of thousands throughout city and rural areas. With cellular wallets serving as the first monetary software for a good portion of the inhabitants, the blackout disrupted financial transactions and exacerbated monetary instability. The shortcoming to speak additional hindered entry to emergency providers and humanitarian assist, compounding the challenges confronted by the individuals of Sudan.
Zain’s incumbent vendor projected a six to nine-month timeline to revive connectivity, citing the necessity to ship and set up {hardware} at a brand new information middle, deploy engineers to handle the setup, and implement the software program. This highlighted the vulnerabilities in Zain’s current on-premise infrastructure, together with excessive prices for catastrophe restoration and restricted flexibility.
Zain wanted an answer that would quickly restore providers, guarantee enterprise continuity, and considerably scale back operational prices, all whereas sustaining compliance with native laws in a unstable setting.
The answer:
Confronted with the urgency of restoring cellular connectivity in a a lot sooner timeline, Zain Sudan approached Totogi to discover how a public cloud-native charging can go reside quick and guarantee resilient and secure connectivity.
Simply 18 days after signing the contract, Totogi efficiently restored Zain’s providers to its clients, showcasing the facility of its progressive, cloud-native method.
On the core of the answer was Totogi’s true SaaS platform, constructed on AWS. In contrast to conventional setups that rely upon {hardware} housed in native information facilities, Totogi’s structure leveraged the scalability and suppleness of the general public cloud. This enabled Zain Sudan to bypass the bodily and logistical challenges posed by the disaster, guaranteeing swift deployment of important cellular providers.
The method concerned migrating Zain Sudan’s cellular providers to the general public cloud, establishing a sturdy and scalable communication community. Totogi’s AI-powered Charging-as-a-Service resolution performed a pivotal function, providing a contemporary, productized SaaS method. Its out-of-the-box performance and simple configurability allowed Zain Sudan to quickly onboard over 20 million subscribers, setting a brand new commonplace for pace and effectivity in disaster response.
Totogi’s resolution is designed to adapt in real-time to unexpected challenges, eliminating the necessity for pricey {hardware}, prolonged customization cycles, and intensive skilled providers. Its multi-tenant structure helps seamless scaling, whereas its pay-by-the-use pricing mannequin ensures affordability. By enabling steady integration and supply (CI/CD), Totogi ensures ongoing innovation and rapid deployment of latest options, maintaining the system agile and up-to-date.
For Zain Sudan, Totogi’s know-how not solely restored important providers but additionally modernized its BSS stack to face up to future challenges. By offering unmatched pace, scalability, and resilience, Totogi empowered Zain Sudan to fulfill pressing humanitarian wants successfully, redefining the function of telecom providers throughout emergencies.
Challenges concerned with implementation and the way these have been overcome:
Restoring Zain Sudan’s cellular connectivity in simply 18 days required overcoming important challenges, together with 24/7 operations, cross-border collaboration, and infrastructure limitations. The group labored tirelessly throughout a number of time zones, leveraging real-time instruments and agile workflows to take care of momentum. By making use of the 80-20 rule, they prioritized core functionalities and duties that may ship the best outcomes, guaranteeing speedy deployment.
As a substitute of counting on conventional information facilities, Totogi used its cloud-native SaaS platform on AWS to bypass logistical hurdles, enabling quick, scalable, and resilient service restoration. AI-driven automation additional expedited onboarding, demonstrating how the mixture of progressive considering and know-how can drive important options in occasions of disaster.
The end result:
Emad Elsheikh, Zain CTO, stated: “Partnering with Totogi allowed us to not solely navigate this disaster but additionally emerge stronger, maintaining our clients linked and operations uninterrupted. Totogi’s progressive know-how, mixed with an unwavering dedication from their group, has been pivotal in connecting individuals throughout Sudan once they wanted it probably the most.
“Transitioning over 20 million subscribers to Totogi’s platform was executed with exceptional pace and effectivity, showcasing the agility and effectiveness of their resolution in managing large-scale subscriber bases beneath demanding circumstances, significantly in occasions of disaster when conventional on-prem programs are more likely to fail.”
The Zain Sudan / Totogi collaboration delivered each monetary and operational advantages. Totogi’s efforts restored community operations, permitting Zain to renew income era whereas enhancing the shopper expertise with profound human affect. It was not nearly re-establishing connectivity however restoring the lifelines of communication, commerce, and hope for hundreds of thousands.
Tens of millions of Sudanese individuals regained entry to important communication providers, cellular cash, and emergency sources. This took them from full isolation — unable to make calls, ship messages, or entry cellular wallets — to regaining very important connections with household, companies, and emergency providers. New subscribers may very well be activated in file time in comparison with conventional strategies, serving to non Zain clients entry communication providers in addition to current clients.
Native companies may function once more, guaranteeing livelihoods have been protected, and emergency providers may as soon as extra attain these in want. Regulatory compliance was additionally swiftly reinstated, guaranteeing uninterrupted service sooner or later.
In the course of the blackout, Zain Sudan was shedding roughly $12 million per week. As soon as the Totogi system went reside, Zain recouped half of this loss. In comparison with the 6 month timeline recommended by the incumbent vendor, that is near 100m USD income generated, recovering the corporate’s monetary outlook.
By migrating charging environments to the cloud, the necessity for {hardware}, infrastructure, and ongoing upkeep was just about eradicated, leading to a discount in its whole price of possession (TCO) by round 76%. Moreover, catastrophe restoration bills – beforehand a big price – have been diminished to a fraction due to the inherent resilience and scalability of the general public cloud.
One other important worth of shifting to the cloud was the discount of carbon emissions by 96%, utilizing 100% renewable power by AWS.
This implementation set a brand new commonplace for resilience in operations beneath excessive circumstances. Totogi’s Charging-as-a-Service went reside and restored connectivity for Zain and its clients simply 18 days from undertaking initiation, in comparison with 12 – 24 months for related options. Totogi’s know-how demonstrated how cutting-edge innovation may meet pressing humanitarian wants, providing a beacon of resilience within the face of a nationwide disaster and reworking the lives of the communities it serves.
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