Zain Sudan is a cell service supplier in Sudan, serving 23 million prospects. It’s a subsidiary of Zain Group, a number one cell and knowledge providers operator within the Center East and North Africa.
The issue:
In early 2024, Sudan was plunged into an escalating civil battle that triggered a nationwide cell connectivity blackout. This left tens of millions of Sudanese residents with out entry to essential communication or cell cash providers, deepening the humanitarian and financial disaster. Three of the nation’s MNOs, together with Zain Sudan, had 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 cell 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 help, 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 middle, 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 cut back operational prices, all whereas sustaining compliance with native laws in a unstable setting.
The answer:
Confronted with the urgency of restoring cell connectivity in a a lot quicker timeline, Zain Sudan approached Totogi to discover how a public cloud-native charging can go reside quick and guarantee resilient and secure connectivity.
Simply 18 days after signing the contract, Totogi efficiently restored Zain’s providers to its prospects, showcasing the ability of its progressive, cloud-native strategy.
On the core of the answer was Totogi’s true SaaS platform, constructed on AWS. Not like conventional setups that rely on {hardware} housed in native knowledge facilities, Totogi’s structure leveraged the scalability and suppleness 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 cell providers.
The method concerned migrating Zain Sudan’s cell providers to the general public cloud, establishing a sturdy and scalable communication community. Totogi’s AI-powered Charging-as-a-Service resolution performed a pivotal position, providing a contemporary, productized SaaS strategy. 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 velocity and effectivity in disaster response.
Totogi’s resolution is designed to adapt in real-time to unexpected challenges, eliminating the necessity for expensive {hardware}, prolonged customization cycles, and in depth 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, protecting the system agile and up-to-date.
For Zain Sudan, Totogi’s know-how not solely restored essential providers but in addition modernized its BSS stack to face up to future challenges. By offering unmatched velocity, 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 had been overcome:
Restoring Zain Sudan’s cell connectivity in simply 18 days required overcoming vital challenges, together with 24/7 operations, cross-border collaboration, and infrastructure limitations. The workforce labored tirelessly throughout a number of time zones, leveraging real-time instruments and agile workflows to take care of momentum. By making use of the 80-20 rule, they prioritized core functionalities and duties that may ship the best outcomes, making certain speedy deployment.
As a substitute 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 mixture of progressive pondering and know-how can drive essential options in occasions of disaster.
The end result:
Emad Elsheikh, Zain CTO, stated: “Partnering with Totogi allowed us to not solely navigate this disaster but in addition emerge stronger, protecting our prospects related and operations uninterrupted. Totogi’s progressive know-how, mixed with an unwavering dedication from their workforce, has been pivotal in connecting individuals throughout Sudan after they wanted it probably the most.
“Transitioning over 20 million subscribers to Totogi’s platform was executed with outstanding velocity and effectivity, showcasing the agility and effectiveness of their resolution in managing large-scale subscriber bases underneath demanding circumstances, notably in occasions of disaster when conventional on-prem programs are more likely 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 impression. It was not nearly re-establishing connectivity however restoring the lifelines of communication, commerce, and hope for tens of millions.
Tens of millions of Sudanese individuals regained entry to essential communication providers, cell cash, and emergency sources. This took them from full isolation — unable to make calls, ship messages, or entry cell wallets — to regaining very important connections with household, companies, and emergency providers. New subscribers might be activated in file time in comparison with conventional strategies, serving to non Zain prospects entry communication providers in addition to current prospects.
Native companies might function once more, making certain livelihoods had 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.
Throughout the blackout, Zain Sudan was shedding roughly $12 million per week. As soon as the Totogi system went reside, Zain recouped half of this loss. In comparison with the 6 month timeline prompt 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 nearly eradicated, leading to a discount in its complete value of possession (TCO) by round 76%. Moreover, catastrophe restoration bills – beforehand a big value – had been decreased to a fraction because of the inherent resilience and scalability of the general public cloud.
One other vital 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 underneath excessive circumstances. Totogi’s Charging-as-a-Service went reside and restored connectivity for Zain and its prospects simply 18 days from mission 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.
Wish to be taught extra about cybersecurity and the cloud from trade leaders? Take a look at Cyber Safety & Cloud Expo going down in Amsterdam, California, and London.
Discover different upcoming enterprise know-how occasions and webinars powered by TechForge right here.