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 knowledge providers operator within the Center East and North Africa.
The issue:
In early 2024, Sudan was plunged into an escalating civil warfare that triggered a nationwide cellular connectivity blackout. This left tens of millions of Sudanese residents with out entry to crucial 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 weak throughout a 40-day blackout interval.
The disaster was monumental in scale, affecting dozens of tens of millions throughout city and rural areas. With cellular wallets serving as the first monetary instrument 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 knowledge heart, 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 atmosphere.
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 stay 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 depend upon {hardware} housed in native knowledge facilities, Totogi’s structure leveraged the scalability and adaptability of the general public cloud. This enabled Zain Sudan to bypass the bodily and logistical challenges posed by the disaster, making certain swift deployment of important cellular providers.
The method concerned migrating Zain Sudan’s cellular providers to the general public cloud, establishing a strong and scalable communication community. Totogi’s AI-powered Charging-as-a-Service answer performed a pivotal position, 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 normal for pace and effectivity in disaster response.
Totogi’s answer is designed to adapt in real-time to unexpected challenges, eliminating the necessity for expensive {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, retaining the system agile and up-to-date.
For Zain Sudan, Totogi’s know-how not solely restored crucial 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 position 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 staff labored tirelessly throughout a number of time zones, leveraging real-time instruments and agile workflows to keep up momentum. By making use of the 80-20 rule, they prioritized core functionalities and duties that will ship the best outcomes, making certain speedy deployment.
As an alternative of counting on conventional knowledge 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 mix of progressive considering and know-how can drive crucial options in occasions of disaster.
The consequence:
Emad Elsheikh, Zain CTO, stated: “Partnering with Totogi allowed us to not solely navigate this disaster but additionally emerge stronger, retaining our clients related and operations uninterrupted. Totogi’s progressive know-how, mixed with an unwavering dedication from their staff, 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 outstanding pace and effectivity, showcasing the agility and effectiveness of their answer in managing large-scale subscriber bases beneath demanding circumstances, notably in occasions of disaster when conventional on-prem methods are prone to fail.”
The Zain Sudan / Totogi collaboration delivered each monetary and operational advantages. Totogi’s efforts restored community operations, permitting Zain to renew income technology whereas enhancing the client expertise with profound human affect. It was not nearly re-establishing connectivity however restoring the lifelines of communication, commerce, and hope for tens of millions.
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese individuals regained entry to crucial communication providers, cellular cash, and emergency assets. 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 could possibly be activated in report time in comparison with conventional strategies, serving to non Zain clients entry communication providers in addition to current clients.
Native companies might function once more, making certain livelihoods have been protected, and emergency providers might as soon as extra attain these in want. Regulatory compliance was additionally swiftly reinstated, making certain uninterrupted service sooner or later.
Through the blackout, Zain Sudan was shedding roughly $12 million per week. As soon as the Totogi system went stay, Zain recouped half of this loss. In comparison with the 6 month timeline urged 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 value of possession (TCO) by round 76%. Moreover, catastrophe restoration bills – beforehand a major value – have been lowered 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 vitality by AWS.
This implementation set a brand new normal for resilience in operations beneath excessive circumstances. Totogi’s Charging-as-a-Service went stay and restored connectivity for Zain and its clients simply 18 days from venture initiation, in comparison with 12 – 24 months for comparable options. Totogi’s know-how demonstrated how cutting-edge innovation might 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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