Caché database speeds up billing solution across Russia
Key Benefits
- High Performance
- Low Cost
- Ease of Use
Relational databases are too slow and expensive
Comta+ has been developing billing solutions since 1998. The previous version
of their system, Mobill 3.1, was based on an industry standard relational database.
By fall, 1999, four deployments were completed in the cities of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
(Kamchatsviazinform company), Vladikavkaz (Telesot-Alania company), Orenburg
(Orenburg GSM company), and Astrakhan (Astrakhan GSM company). It was at that
time when it became obvious that the proposed technology would impose significant
hardware costs on the customers. Many of them were leasing their equipment
and thus couldn't afford to spend much on hardware and software. The review
of the project's concept became necessary.
The company needed to come up with an affordable billing solution that could run on entry-level and midrange servers, and meet customer's processing speed needs.
The search for the best solution
In fall, 1998, the developers began forming the concept for a new version of
Mobill. At the same time, the company was looking for a DBMS to base
its new project on. Two major qualities sought for in a new database
were its performance and cost efficiency for customers. Of course, other criteria
were also taken into consideration, including ease of use, open standards,
the outlook for a DBMS (whether it's likely to be developed further), quality
and availability of support, the time it takes the vendor to respond to a customer's
request, etc. Finally, Comta+ chose Caché DBMS from InterSystems. Taking
into account the integral price/performance ratio including the price of hardware,
the developers were planning to deliver a solution that could provide similar
or better functionality compared to the competition, but for much lower price.
"Caché's object architecture provides an unprecedented performance increase in all operations and offers peak "hot billing" performance of 120 calls/sec."
- Sergey Kassatov
Mobill lead developer
Comta+
Deployment benefits
By September, 2000, most of the development and testing of the new
software were finished. Orenburg GSM company was selected as a test bed for
pilot deployment of the new Mobill 3.52.
In November, 2000, Orenburg GSM completely migrated to the new version. In December the second deployment of Mobill 3.52 was finished in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and in summer 2001 the third system was deployed in Vladikavkaz.
Today the system has the following performance benchmarks:
On Pentium II 2x700 Mhz, 512 Mb RAM, Windows NT 4.0, Caché 3.22:
- time to process daily traffic data: 25 to 35 minutes;
- time to process monthly traffic data: 3 to 7 hours depending on server
hardware;
all figures shown for a network of 10,000 to 12,000 subscribers.
"The undisputed benefits of Caché from a business perspective are its web interface, easy maintenance and support, and incredibly low hardware requirements: our database requires 3 to 4 times less hardware performance compared to relational databases."
- Rustem Alimbekov
CEO
Comta+
The work on the product continues, new functionality is being added, the user interface is being redesigned for more usability, and the developers are working on further increasing the performance of their product. Also in the plans are several more deployments across Russia. InterSystems provides the developers with excellent consulting, technical and marketing support.
- oOo -
November, 2001 - Comta Plus released a new version of Mobill family billing system, Mobill 3.60 Compared to its predecessor, Mobill 3.52, the new version has a number of additional features. Mobill 3.60 includes a computer telephony subsystem, and that is why it can be now rightfully considered a modular integrated solution. Also presented was a RADIUS- and SNMP-based subsystem for Internet providers that can function both in a standalone mode and together with mobile and wired billing solutions. Additionally, the new system supports CSP-based remote dealer workstations via secure channels using SSL technology. Distributed structure of the database allows for practically unlimited storage time for call data.
One of the major achievements was the tenfold increase in data processing speed of Caché DBMS, which makes it possible for Mobill 3.60 to work with up to a 1,000,000 subscribers. This also means lower costs of buying and servicing the hardware for billing systems.