The fifth generation of network technology is like nothing that has come before it. 5G delivers timely changes to address an unprecedented growth in data, voice, and multi-media services from increasingly digital end users, and exponential growth in new emerging devices for differentiated services. With this enormous increase in the types and volumes of traffic comes an opportunity for Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to reinvent how they monetize their network investments. By embracing new cloud native principles at the heart of the new 5G architecture, CSPs can do more than simply transform their networks to handle increased traffic from new services and devices – they can infuse modern technologies and practices involving automation to scale both vertically and horizontally to fully capitalize on the potential of 5G.
MATRIXX Software develops cloud native 5G monetization solutions that serve large operator groups, regional carriers, and emerging digital service providers around the world. MATRIXX Converged Charging System (CCS) enables CSPs to run critical network workloads like converged charging in the cloud at high performance levels, while allowing operators the flexibility of running massive workloads when and where they need them for efficiency, cost reduction, and control.
The IBM Hybrid Cloud Build collaborated with MATRIXX to conduct scalability testing and deliver performance benchmarks for MATRIXX’s 5G CCS running on Red Hat OpenShift and the IBM Cloud for Telecommunications. The teams came together to provision the right resources, devise options for shared storage and load balancing, and strategically design the right solution to ensure high performance for realistic conditions, which involved a mix of 4G and 5G traffic, complex business rules and shared balances, comparable to actual field scenarios.
The joint solution reflected MATRIXX’s readiness to support large operators with extremely demanding challenges, supporting a performance milestone of more than 200K transactions per second (TPS) across 100M subscribers, with an average end-to-end latency of 7.4 milliseconds across all operations, including network gateways and routers. The Hybrid Cloud Build Team helped MATRIXX achieve their objective to demonstrate the seamless scalability of their highly efficient, flexible, cloud native charging solution, paving the way for operators to confidently run next generation complex workloads and deliver on new ways of monetizing 5G services.
In addition, MATRIXX and the IBM Hybrid Cloud Build Team used their performance benchmark configuration and deployment experience to develop a repeatable blueprint for best practices with comparable in-field solutions. Beyond making deployment of MATRIXX 5G CCS faster, the joint learnings will make it easier for CSPs to harness the power of cloud to achieve their specific performance targets.
Telcos process more transaction per day than the largest companies in other industries do in a year. Achieving this benchmark demonstrates that MATRIXX and IBM together are enabling service providers to run critical workloads like charging in the cloud.
-Marc Price, CTO, MATRIXX Software