MTN boosts SMS by 66% with Orca

MTN`s 1,1 million subscribers are receiving their short messages three times faster than before after MTN`s installation of a locally designed and assembled data storage solution from Telecom Configurations, a company in the Computer Configurations Holdings group.

MTN boosts SMS by 66% with Orca

MTN`s 1,1 million subscribers are receiving their short messages three times faster than before after MTN`s installation of a locally designed and assembled data storage solution from Telecom Configurations, a company in the Computer Configurations Holdings group.

MTN has attached an Orca 3000 disk subsystem with 16GB of storage capacity to each of its five HP-9000 servers. Each of the five Orca 3000s is equipped with fully redundant controllers, a hot standby drive and 12 data drives using Raid 0 + 1.

The Orca solution proved the most cost-effective option, says MTN`s value-added services head Jaco Fourie. "We needed storage that could provide a large writeback cache in order to boost I/O. Products with that cache configuration were in the high end and came in at more than R1 million. Orca gave us the very high performance we were looking for, at less than half the price of imported storage."

MTN and Telecom Configurations entered into a co-operative exercise to ensure the Orca delivered on expectations. "We needed scalability, flexibility and availability, as the short message service (SMS) is critical to our subscribers," Fourie says. "The Orcas achieved all three objectives."

The Orca has been inspected by MTN`s SMS software provider, Dublin-based Logica Aldiscon, which is considering implementing Orcas elsewhere in the cellular industry.

SMS is used by cellular service subscribers, as well as by vehicle tracking companies which use the service for TCP/IP-based peer-to-peer communication. In addition, MTN offers a unique, free SMS Website through which users can send e-mail messages.

Faster messaging is only one advantage of the new storage. The monthly database update has been reduced from six hours to 20 minutes. Purging of redundant messages has been reduced from eight hours to one. Call data records, compiled overnight to reduce system disruption, can now be effected at any time without degrading the servers` performance.

"These servers must perform at maximum efficiency at all times. For that reason we have a 24x7 service agreement with Telecom Configurations taking responsibility for the availability of the Orcas," Fourie says. "Their engineers have responded promptly to calls for assistance, and have even made design changes to the Orca to suit our needs. In the light of the critical nature of the installation, these design changes were effected within two weeks."