Ernest Cu (Globe Telecom)
Globe Telecom has moved the majority of its technology infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance experience levels for more than 80 million customers across the Philippines.
As the largest mobile network operator in the country, the telecommunications giant is leveraging key cloud services such as compute, database and analytics, supported by machine learning and customer engagement solutions.
The business has so far migrated “carrier-grade and mission-critical” applications from on-premises data centres to AWS, spanning contact centre operations, customer analytics, network and service assurance systems, in addition to infrastructure operations, monitoring and security tools.
With plans in place to modernise more applications in the future, the move has helped reduce the time required to provision new infrastructure resources from over two months to less than two days, while also boosting app performance by 15x and reducing infrastructure maintenance and operation costs by 30 per cent.
“Globe is committed to delivering new services that promote digital inclusion and improve the lives of Filipinos, and AWS helps us do just that,” said Ernest Cu, president and CEO of Globe. “The capabilities of AWS enable us to foster a customer-focused company culture that uses technology to solve meaningful customer problems. This helps us develop more purposeful relationships with our customers, making us their network of choice.”
Leveraging Amazon Connect - a cloud-based contact centre - Globe has enhanced end-user service levels by transitioning more than 3000 customer service agents from the company’s legacy, on-premises Avaya contact centre offering.
Central to such efforts was the roll-out of Amazon Polly - a machine learning service which turns text into “lifelike speech” - to help customers with service inquiries such as bill payments or updating subscription details.
Using Amazon Lex - a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text - Globe also built an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered customer service chatbot named Gie of Globe, connected to Globe CRM platforms, within the space of 12 weeks. Gie supports self-service transactions for post-paid and pre-paid mobile users, such as topping up mobile data.
Delving deeper, Globe has migrated seven core carrier-grade workloads from on-premises data centres to AWS, including its MYCOM network and service assurance system.
“Globe is successfully transforming to become more innovative and agile to better meet the rapidly changing demands of its customers,” said Conor McNamara, managing director of ASEAN at AWS. “By selecting AWS for the majority of its cloud infrastructure, Globe enables all employees across the organisation to access the technology and applications needed to innovate new services at speed and scale, bringing opportunities to deliver new customer experiences and further drive digital inclusion in the Philippines.”
To complement the deployment, Globe recently launched a skills enablement program to ensure 100 per cent of the company’s internal IT team is AWS certified by 2021. Under the banner of Athena Globe Community of Practice, the initiative incorporates AWS training and certification programs with more than 200 employees already completing the courses this year.
Meanwhile in April, Globe acquired Cascadeo Corporation in a US$4 million deal designed to expand cloud capabilities in the key enterprise markets of the US and the Philippines.
As revealed by Channel Asia, terms of the agreement resulted in Globe acquiring “substantially all” of the assets of the US-based cloud consulting specialist, which included Cascadeo Corporation and Cascadeo Partners.
Founded in 2006, Cascadeo operates as a Premier Consulting Partner of AWS in North America, backed by extensive managed services capabilities.
The business specialises in the deployment of automation, data analytics and cloud-native platform-as-a-service offerings, in addition to serverless infrastructure and programmatic security. In addition to AWS, key vendor alliances also exist with Microsoft and Google Cloud, alongside NetApp and VMware.
Cascadeo is headquartered in Seattle and maintains a Cloud Operations Centre of Excellence in Manila, which supports customers in the US and the Philippines.
