Telecom Provider Leverages AWS' Storage Scalability

Challenge:

A telecommunications provider needed a solution that could rapidly ingest massive amounts of data, but knew costs could easily get out of control. Due to the data demands of their business, this mid-size telecom required a disproportionally large amount of storage when compared to similar non-telecommunications customers. Asked to take on terabytes (TB) of new data every day, the customer’s storage platform needed to be able to provide excess capacity far beyond what was currently available. As the customer explored their physical options, they found brick and mortar data centers required too much capital investment to be practical and didn’t believe a storage vendor was capable of providing both the scalability and usability the customer required.

Solution:

SHI’s cloud architects pitched AWS S3 IA as a cost-effective solution capable of scaling based on demand. AWS allows the customer to pay for only what they need when it comes to object-based storage. It enables the customer’s platform to ingest dozens of TB per day without having to constantly worry about maintaining the physical hardware, power, cooling, and logistics necessary in a comparable physical environment.

SHI’s AWS team analyzed the client’s data usage to ensure AWS S3 IA was a viable solution and discussed any application challenges that could arise. What started as a solution using S3 for image data with hash tables, backed by EC2, EBS and provisioned IOPS, has been modified over time into a solution that includes staging out to IA with EFS.

The team also assisted the customer’s technical and financial teams in monitoring usage patterns, making financial projections and offering technical guidance.

Benefits:

The OpEx model provided by AWS’ cloud storage solution means the customer can expand to the exact capacity they need every day and continue to focus on meeting business objectives. By moving to AWS S3 IA, the telecom has already recognized an estimated $1 million in cost-avoidance related to data center maintenance!