Case study regarding the complex cloudification of sensitive core applications. The project consisted in porting a collection of bare metal applications in the core network of tier-1 operator to telco cloud VNF.

1. Porting bare metal applications to telco
cloud virtual network functions (part I)
US ISV/Tier-1 US operator
BUSINESS CASE
Our client initiated major cloud migration project and
requested Computaris’ expert support in the areas of
development, migration and technical consultancy. The
project consisted in porting a collection of bare metal
applications in the core network of tier-1 operator to telco
cloud VNF.
COMPUTARIS CONTRIBUTION
Over the years Computaris has developed and delivered a wide
range of network element applications making up the client’s
unified subscriber database. These applications include:
bootstrapping function, application publisher, multimedia
telephone synchronization server, PCRF locator function, real-
time provisioning gateway, enhanced equipment identity
register, provisioning gateway proxy.
Computaris undertook the migration and deployment into the
cloud of the network element products it had developed,
including the development of a new central administrator VNF
responsible for statistics, analytics and management of
graphical user interfaces of the network elements.
For the successful delivery of the cloudification project
Computaris has provided a complex mix of technology skills,
know-how and strategic approach, with a focus on
performance and quality of delivery.
In terms of technologies and approach, for migration, the
unified subscriber database network elements were packaged
as VNFs and onboarded to the NFV cloud by virtualizing the
applications on Kernel-based virtual machines as QCOW2
images. The application topology was defined as Heat
Orchestration Template and mapped to VNF elements. The
application lifecycles were defined as Mistral workflows and
Ansible playbooks in addition to the existing configuration
management and lifecycle tools that were in place (Chef) to
support application and configuration lifecycles of the
applications. (continued on next slide)

2. Porting bare metal applications to telco
cloud virtual network functions (part II)
US ISV/Tier-1 US operator
COMPUTARIS CONTRIBUTION (continued)
In terms of migration roadmap, the application lifecycle
consisted in migration to the latest versions of OpenStack and
third-party dependencies; refactoring of some products using
more reliable and container friendly technologies (eg: Golang)
and redesign of the deployment and migration to Docker,
Kubernetes, containers.
The overall cloudification effort of all applications amounted to
5,000 mandays with constant monitoring of quality and
reliability throughout the delivery of the cluster of projects.
One example of project performance indicators has shown
defect density under 0.15% from a total of 290 functional test
cases.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS
Cloudification, as an essential ingredient of every digital
transformation journey, is more than just a technology project,
it is a powerful tool that underpins business success.
By successfully porting the applications in the cloud and
integrating them with the client’s ecosystem of applications,
Computaris has enabled the easier management of
instances and hardware resources, increased scalability
with increased number of subscribers and easier deployment
of network elements. Containerization of telecom applications
was also implemented to provide easy path for capacity
increase and advanced security.