BICS Unlocks Real-Time Signaling Intelligence

Tieto Tech Consulting helped BICS implement a scalable big data platform to process high volumes of signaling data in real time, improving visibility and accelerating analysis across telecom operations. The solution enables advanced analytics, and provides:

• Real-time data processing and faster insights
• Improved visibility across signaling data
• Scalable architecture for growing data volumes

BICS is recognized as a world-class voice carrier and a leading provider of mobile data services. The company offers a holistic suite of innovative solutions and services within Voice, Messaging, Roaming, Data & Connectivity, 5G, IoT, Cloud Communications, Capacity Management, and other domains. Headquartered in Brussels, BICS serves 2,500+ enterprise and operator customers across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Initially, BICS relied on a traditional RDBMS-based Data Warehouse that could not efficiently process or analyze growing data volumes. Given that BICS operated with massive volumes of data, it was decided to migrate the current workload to a new data storage and analytics system.

The Big Data platform extension project was then launched with the following goals:

• Migrate to a scalable big data platform capable of handling over 10 terabytes of data
• Enable the parallel processing of both signaling data coming from hardware switches/probs and data feeds related to business processes
• Allow analyzing report data in real-time
• Optimize network capacity and traffic behavior
• Build a data platform that can meet Advanced Analytics needs, e.g., ensure customer behavior analysis and predictive modeling, using AI & ML approaches
• Provide 24/7 data platform monitoring to meet its SLA metrics and enhance data accuracy
• Optimize costs for storing and managing massive amounts of data
• Ensure compliance of the data platform with GDPR

We contributed to extending the Big Data platform and helped BICS perform a non-disruptive migration of their data from heterogeneous sources into a unified data platform built on the Apache Hadoop framework.

Since the migration, we have been fully responsible for the Big Data platform of BICS, including:

• Developing data preparation and ETL processing using Apache NiFi, Spark, and Hive
• Designing and maintaining the Big Data platform architecture
• Enabling batch and real-time stream data processing
• Ensuring parallel data processing with Hadoop to prepare signaling data for further reporting in just 15 minutes
• Implementing capabilities for AI & ML predictions based on the existing data patterns
• Establishing an operational layer for monitoring and SLA management, including visibility of international traffic via a customer-facing portal
• Providing 24/7 platform monitoring and support

We helped BICS build a cost-efficient, GDPR-compliant data platform with advanced data reporting capabilities.

For BICS, the Hadoop-based data platform developed by Tieto Tech Consulting enabled processing large-scale data and converting it into actionable insights at the speed of their business. The effectiveness of the solution has enabled additional use cases across IoT, MVNO/MVNE, and billing, which continue to expand within the platform.

The Big Data platform for BICS has turned into a powerful data management and advanced analytics solution with numerous benefits, including:

• Optimized storage and analysis of high data volumes (up to 2 TB during peak traffic)
• Reduced data analysis time from 30 to 15 minutes, supporting a 1.5× traffic increase over four years
• Improved cost efficiency and margin through enhanced data tracking and analysis
• Increased visibility and availability of customer data
• Real-time, granular reporting for faster and more informed decision-making
• Proactive issue detection through end-to-end monitoring and alerting
• Enablement of ML-powered analytics, including network optimization, fraud detection, and predictive insights.

• Hadoop
• Spark
• Kafka
• Oozie
• Elasticsearch
• Qlik Sense BI tools
• NiFi
• Hive