Data Warehouse - Asia Pacific Telecom Group

Scenario

Taiwan’s telecoms industry is fiercely competitive, such that IT becomes a business enabler and product differentiator.

The Asia Pacific Telecom Group [APTG], is a leading high-tech telecom group in Taiwan, offering integragted 4Cs [Communications, Computers , Cable TVs, and Contents] to provide the most comprehensive broadband info-com services on the island. The Group consists of Asia Pacific Broadband Telecom, Asia Pacific Broadband Wireless and Asia Pacific Online. APTG launched 3G services in July 2003, achieved a subscriber base of 500,000 by end 2004, and has experienced steady growth since.

APTG's value of innovation is examplified in its services:

• The world's first to provide Cable Modem Internet access and Cable Phone on a two-way Fiber Cable TV Network.
• Taiwan's first to provide Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN) on ELL and VDSL.
• Integration of fixed-network communications, mobile communications, Internet, cable TV, and digital content technologies.

APTG saw their data warehouse and BI analytics systems as a key component in its growth strategy.

Business need: When the company realized that its existing data warehousing system was growing at a break-neck speed [both in data and user terms], it recognised the need to expand its data infrastructure capacity, with the aim of meeting demand in the next one or two years.

Solution

After extensive evaluation studies, IBM’s robust database middleware - DB2 Universal Database [UDB] was selected.

Their decision was based upon:

IBM's solid experience in the telecommunications industry, particularly its expertise in processing mass data

IBM offered the best combination of functionality, reliability, cost and smooth interoperability

Details

APTG recognised its existing data warehousing system was growing at a very high rate, and an expansion system for more capacity was needed.

IBM DB2 UDB was selected for its "strong functionality, reliability, best cost-benefit ratio and ability to interoperate smoothly with other vendors’ systems".

• The company’s operation system was Oracle-based
• Its existing data warehousing system was Teradata

APTG decided against expanding capacity directly on the Teradata system and instead sought a compatible expansion system that was more cost effective and equally powerful.

Implementation

Expectations, standards and technical specifications were clearly communicated by APTG at the beginning of the deployment.

DB2 UDB and WebSphere II technologies offered additional unexpected benefits
Even though IBM and Teradatas internal architecture and data systems were innately different, IBM’s DB2 UDB system easily integrated into the existing system.

In addition, the federated heterogeneous data access technology afforded by IBM’s WebSphere Information Integrator (II) significantly reduced the risks of data migration and the need for extensive programming. Furthermore, WebSphere II also allows users to access multiple heterogeneous databases simultaneously.

IBM’s in-house consultants provided direct assistance, to ensure a quick and smooth implementation.

APTG and IBM worked closely on:

• Product tests
• Environment settings
• Data migration

Deployment was completed within six months.

Business Benefits

Deploying DB2 UDB:

• Increased data capacity as much as four times
• Has introduced a backup mechanism, coexisting with Teradata - at the time, Teradata only stored short-term data. All historical data has migrated to IBM DB2 UDB. New data in the NCR Teradata system is migrated to the DB2 UDB system on a daily basis.
• Easy to use - DB2 UDB’s smooth interoperability with both Teradata and Oracle systems greatly shortened the learning curve for employees.
• There was no change in end user environment.

[2005]

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