Software developed by the Brains Group in Moldova ensures millions of multimedia mobile phone messages delivered daily without fail for Cable & Wireless wholesale customers.

• Tuesday, 28 February 2006

Fast Facts

• Leading Global Telco
• MMS Exchange Between Operators
• Mission Critical Application
• Brains Group Nearshore Team In Eastern Europe
• Ongoing Scalable And Flexible Extension to C & W Team
• Design And Agile Development
• Using C++, Linux, SSH And MySQL
• Delivery on Schedule And To Spec.
• Handles Millions of Multimedia Messages daily

A Brains Group Extended Team developed and maintains software for one of the world’s leading international communications companies. The software handles millions of multimedia mobile phone messages daily without fail! Cable & Wireless is a Global leader in telecommunications infrastructure solutions. One of the services provided by Carrier Services, the Cable & Wireless business unit dedicated to wholesale customers, is a GRX (Global Roaming Exchange) network or GPRS (Global Packet Radio Service) roaming exchange.

The service provides a mechanism to relay MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) messages between global mobile operators. The Cable & Wireless MMS Relay Agent solution provides a secure, resilient and geographically diverse platform for the efficient and transparent exchange of MMS between mobile operators. The system is now supporting many of the world’s largest mobile networks. The software applications used by Cable & Wireless to implement the service were developed by Brains Group in its Eastern European development centre.

Requirements
Cable & Wireless needed a team of developers to create the application for the MMS interconnect service. To fulfil this requirement a team was needed to design and implement a high volume service, handling at least 1500 messages per minute on an entry level Intel based server. The final solution that was delivered by Cable & Wireless using the Brains Group application is a scalable platform operating on multiple servers, with almost no limit to the message volume capacity. In order to make the service compliant with legislation several features needed to be implemented, including phone number portability, white listing and throttle control. These requirements added complexity and performance issues to the solution that the team had to design and implement. The system also includes a complex interface to the Cable & Wireless billing system to record and charge the various mobile networks for the traffic. John Candish, Technical Director Carrier Services explains, "The Brains Group team have worked as an integral part of the Cable & Wireless project, enabling Cable & Wireless to respond very rapidly to customer demands."

QUOTE

"The Brains Group team have worked as an integral part of the Cable & Wireless project, enabling Cable & Wireless to respond very rapidly to customer demands. They have taken our requirements and delivered on time and to specification consistently throughout the project.”

-John Candish, Technical Director Carrier Services, Cable & Wireless

Solution

Brains Group was selected as the provider to deliver the applications. Our solution was to provide an ongoing team of developers to design and implement the applications to support the service. The Brains Group team spent time with Cable & Wireless to understand in detail the requirements for the platform. We needed to be able to understand and overcome the complications of routing in a mobile exchange. John Candish again explains, "Brains Group have taken our requirements and delivered on time and to specification consistently throughout the project.”
Brains Group and Cable & Wireless worked together to design the best software architecture available. The Brains Group Eastern European development centre provided the development resource to implement the solution.

Benefits

Brains Group provided a flexible and scaleable team to complete the tasks on time, and to budget. This team was increased and decreased according to the demand necessary to achieve the expected results.

The development was done using an agile method, allowing Cable & Wireless to react to changing market requirements. This meant the company could stay ahead of the competition, technical requirements could be changed as necessary, and features moved from build to build. Brains Group delivered several releases to meet delivery times. This enabled Cable & Wireless to start deploying and testing the platform ahead of schedule, and therefore gets to the commercial operation stage of the service earlier.

Brains Group had all the skills required to develop this complex and mission-critical application. The project required a very high level of experience developing C++, Linux, SSH and MySQL in a high performing environment. The team demonstrated their expertise in producing the quality code required to meet the demands of an international telecommunication service.
As the project life cycle progresses, issues arise and clarification and confirmation of details are always required. Nearshore resources allowed easy daily communication to clarify and confirm issues, which facilitated the smooth progress of the project.

Time-zone proximity enabled simple and quick resolution of issues, as the development team were able to solve issues by overlapping Cable & Wireless’ working day. A quality-first approach enabled efficient code development, as re-work was effectively eradicated. This allowed Cable & Wireless to look forward to future features, rather than expending substantial re-developing and testing time.

About Cable & Wireless

Cable & Wireless is one of the world’s leading international communications companies. It provides fixed and mobile voice, data, IP (Internet Protocol) and broadband services to business and residential customers, as well as services to other telecoms carriers, mobile operators and providers of content, applications and internet services. Cable & Wireless’ principal operations are in the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Panama, Macau and Monaco. For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to www.cw.com.

About Brains Group
Brains Group offers high quality software development and consulting services to our clients around the world, using the very best local and nearshore talent. Our aim is to become the premier provider of IT talent and advice from Emerging Europe; bringing sustainable transformation to the locations where we work.

For more information, please contact:

Monique Chambers
Compass Rose
0870 2407995
07788 751722
monique_chambers@compassrose.co.uk

This press release was distributed via SourceWire, a service from Daryl Willcox Publishing, on behalf of Compass Rose (Malta). For more information visit http://www.dwpub.com/pressreleasewires