Open-Source Solutions in Telecom: Replacing Oracle DBMS with Nexign Nord in the CSP’s BSS Stack
Open-source software has become the foundation of the IT services market and has driven IT development worldwide. Maxim Nartov, Chief Business Officer at Nexign, tells about the popularity of this trend among communications service providers (CSP) and the benefits of commercial products based on open-source technologies compared to traditional and expensive legacy solutions.
What is the current state of the open-source solutions in the telecom industry in the MEA region? How in-demand are such solutions in general?
The demand for open-source solutions continues to increase: the open-source services market in MEA is estimated to reach a projected revenue of US$ 7,549.4 million by 2030 with a CAGR of 13.4% from 2024 to 2030. This trend is not surprising: the region is in its transformative era of technological innovations and advancements, and open-source software can successfully help local CSPs drive innovation and accelerate the deployment of new services. As open-source solutions do not require purchasing expensive licenses, they help reduce total ownership costs (TCO) of the CSP’s IT infrastructure, as well as contribute to making connectivity business in Africa and the Middle East more cost-efficient. Besides, they are flexible and customizable, can be adjusted to each company’s needs. Open-source software also provides freedom from vendor lock-in, thus minimizing related risks and advancing transparency and control. At Nexign, we have been actively using open-source technologies in our solutions for a long time. For example, last year, we announced a new generation of our Nexign BSS, a database-agnostic digital BSS. It can run on any core DBMS that meets the CSP’s budget and overall IT strategy, such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, or even our enterprise-grade RDBMS based on PostgreSQL — Nexign Nord.
Open-source software is often associated with security and fault tolerance risks, but commercial open-source products resolve these issues. It is especially critical for large infrastructural players, such as telecom companies. For example, at Nexign, we conduct a complete internal functional and non-functional audit before including open-source solutions in our IT stack. We also refine them to ensure the highest security and availability parameters. It helps us confirm the reliability of our products and make sure they can be trusted by CSPs.
How can CSPs choose solutions based on open source and migrate to them?
A CSP needs to understand the requirements for the new solution and research the market for a suitable option. For example, we migrated BSS components of MegaFon, one of the leading CSPs in Eastern Europe, from Oracle DBMS to Nexign Nord RDBMS to ensure the client’s infrastructural independence from western software. At first, the company planned to replace Oracle with PostgreSQL, but its vanilla version could not support critical business systems, as it did not meet several key requirements of a Tier-1 CSP, including technical support, fault tolerance, and security standards. As a result, our client started analyzing the market of DBMS based on PostgreSQL and selected Nexign Nord.
The migration of all key business systems was planned considering complexity: from small to the most voluminous, from lightly loaded to highly loaded. To synchronize data between Oracle and Nexign Nord and guarantee fast rollback without data loss in case of accidents, the teams used our analog of Oracle GoldenGate — Nexign Data Integrator. The first migration to Nexign Nord — migration of the financial product management system in billing — took place in 2022.
What were primary reasons for choosing your solution?
At Nexign, we suggested significantly lower licensing and support costs than our competitors in the market. Besides, we were ready to customize our DBMS to the client’s security and fault tolerance requirements in the shortest time possible. Finally, we provided an opportunity for extended technical support with 24/7 consulting and operation and also broadened it to other products installed along with Nexign Nord.
What were key results of the project?
By switching to Nexign Nord, MegaFon has advanced its BSS infrastructure’s technological independence and operational agility. Our client could save on implementation, licensing, and support up to 10 times, as compared to similar solutions in the local market. Nexign Nord also allowed the CSP to create additional extensions and modules to solve its business tasks, thus increasing its technological flexibility in managing DBMS. Currently, the volume of our client’s IT infrastructure operating on Nexign Nord exceeds 5 thousand CPU cores and 12.5 TPS benchmark.
What are the future perspectives of open-source solutions in telecom?
The market of commercial open-source solutions will continue to grow, as they help resolve the key problem of CSPs across the world — increasing efficiency while reducing TCO. CSPs will continue to build their expertise in open source, deploy them on their own, or turn to vendors like Nexign if they want a ready-made solution with professional support.