Case Study
Subsidiary of a major player in financial services in sub-Saharan Africa, the customer has 40 branches in the Democratic Republic of Congo, including 15 in Kinshasa.
SONEMA has provided VSAT connectivity for the customer for over 10 years, both for domestic and international connections and for the Internet access.
The Challenge
The customer’s business activity has recently grown significantly through the diversification of their clients and by developing their national network of branches.
To support this evolution, one of the main business specific applications needed to be migrated to a new version. This migration involved a significant increase in traffic on the VSAT links – the equivalent of three times the bandwidth capacity.
After an analysis by our technical experts, we observed that the customer’s infrastructure would not support such an increase.
Sonema's Solution
SONEMA accompanied the customer throughout the design and planning phases for the migration of applications, and found that the best solution was to improve the VSAT network infrastructure and support the bandwidth increase required.
An optimised architecture was recommended and implemented: limiting investments at the central site and also reducing the time required for the deployment.
The solution included the replacement of:
- VSAT transmission equipment
- Optimisation and network control equipment to allow the routing of the new traffic rate whilst respecting the predefined QoS rules to optimise the bandwidth use.
The customer had a time constraint: the bandwidth increase had to be carried out in a very short time in order to deploy their national telecom network.
This was a new challenge for our team because the lead time for the materiel didn’t conform to the standard lead time.
The SONEMA experts were able to by-pass the problem by setting up a temporary architecture which could support the majority of the additional bandwidth to be supplied on the network.
A satellite capacity, at the level of 60 % of the required capacity, was temporarily allocated pending delivery of the final equipment. Upon receipt of the equipment, the definitive architecture was then implemented.
Going The Extra Mile
The customer did not have the expertise or resources needed to correctly set up and operate the chosen optimisation solution. As a result, he also entrusted SONEMA to handle the service’s managed operations.
This combination of appliances and managed operations allows SONEMA to constantly adjust the set-up and operation of the optimisation equipment and the customer’s network security, ensuring that they are always up to date.
Conclusion
The solution proposed by SONEMA enabled the customer to perform the application migration in the best possible conditions despite the constraints and whilst respecting the schedule.
This migration which was essential allowed the expansion and diversification of activity and services of the customer.
SONEMA DRC, a subsidiary of the SONEMA Group based in Kinshasa, maintains the customer VSAT network and assures an immediate intervention in case of equipment failure, thereby guaranteeing the continuity of the customer’s Business.
