Putting customers first.AgilIT™ hosted application solicits network

feedback right from the device.

TELUS’ Technology Strategy Team developed the TNE application as an innovative way to solicit customer feedback

on network experiences. The tech strategy team needed a reliable, robust solution to host the application without

compromising the planned launch date or anticipated adoption scale. TELUS AgilIT Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) fit

the bill. Able to bring up virtual machines in two days, the tech strategy team got the capacity required to complete

intensive testing, go to market quickly as planned and support initial high volume downloads and ongoing operations.

TELUS Technology Strategy team accelerates launch of the TELUS Network Experience (TNE) application, meets

launch day performance requirements and supports ongoing scale.

Meeting Customer First priorities

TELUS has a company-wide commitment to delighting

customers – getting better every day by listening

to their needs. Leveraging customer feedback,

TELUS can generate new ideas to improve systems,

policies and processes with the goal of enhancing

the customer experience. TNE is one of those ideas.

Designed to give customers a voice, users download

the application on to their mobile devices and submit

network issue reports automatically. In addition, they

receive tips about device usage and updates about

network fixes and network service improvements.

“TNE, as a concept, was born from our corporate

Customer First initiative,” says Dan MacDonald,

Product Manager, Network Services at TELUS.

“We targeted the user experience from a network

perspective, enabling users to submit network

degradation issues automatically. We’re the only

Canadian carrier inviting customers to participate

in the experience of network performance, which

sets us apart. For us, it’s a way to “crowd source”

network improvements, using direct customer input to

accelerate prioritization of fixes in the near term and

plan site builds in the long term.”

A need for infrastructure flexibility

When Prashanth Dappula, Design Specialist, TELUS

Technology Strategy Team, builds applications, he

accounts for the stringent hosting requirements set

forth by the TELUS Business Transformation Unit (BT).

However, BT’s operating system, application system

and database requirements didn’t suit the functionality

envisioned for TNE. Having built the application on

a specific middleware platform, Dappula recognized

that complying with BT’s requirements would have

added six months to the development cycle to replace

the middleware. Dappula’s mandate was to get this

application to market as soon as possible while

ensuring data residency in Canada, so he needed to

explore other options.

After doing some research and connecting with

TELUS’ Cloud and Hosted Services team, Dappula

chose TELUS AgilIT VPC, TELUS’ Infrastructure-as-a-

Service solution. With easy, quick access to compute

and storage resources, Dappula avoided the time

and cost associated with procuring, provisioning and

configuring hardware to support the chosen application

platform. In addition, he was able to leverage TELUS

AgilIT VPC for both development and production,

© 2013 TELUS. 13_00299-02

For more information on how you can leverage the cloud as a sourcing strategy for strategy-oriented IT

that drives the business, visit telus.com/cloud

gaining the capability to test scale according to usage

rates anticipated upon launch. Having this capability

eliminated the costs of over-provisioning as well as the

configuration and installation risks that can come with a

“go live” event.

“We received the details for logging in within a day,

and I was able to configure the virtual machines and

bring them online within two days,” says Dappula.

“With browser-based hardware capabilities, I could

start, stop, create or replicate virtual machines with a

few clicks, so we could deploy and test new versions

of the application as the project progressed. It was

critical to gauge how intensely we could scale, so we

based our user acceptance and performance tests on

simulations with 14 issue reports per second. When

that level of intensity exceeded our compute capacity,

we adjusted the processing power and memory

accordingly. It happened seamlessly, within hours.”

Tangible network improvements

TELUS launched TNE in February 2013. Already,

adoption is ahead of schedule, with downloads one

third from target. And TNE data is delivering on the

application’s goal of helping to prioritize fixes. Creston,

British Columbia provides an excellent example. TNE

had compiled multiple reports of “no signal” and “poor

voice quality,” which were supported by network KPIs.

There was already a planned upgrade to increase

capacity of the Creston HSPA site, but the network

engineering team accelerated it by several weeks to

address TNE feedback. TELUS was also able to push

out a news story via TNE to users in that area: “Hey

Creston BC! We’ve recently upgraded a tower in your

area. This change will improve your wireless signal

quality and resolve the service issues that have been

reported. Thanks for your feedback and for using our

TELUS Network Experience app!”

“TELUS AgilIT VPC helped us achieve our objectives

on a few different fronts,” says MacDonald. “The

flexibility helped us host the application as it was built,

without the complexity of replacing the middleware.

We tested the upper limits of usage behaviours with

guaranteed computing power, so launch was flawless.

And we have the inherent scalability to support our

target number of downloads and issue submissions.

But most importantly, we met the strategic priorities of

our Customer First Program by getting this application

to market quickly with robust functionality so that we

can use customer feedback to fix issues and eventually

plan for future capacity. TELUS AgilIT VPC contributed

directly to TELUS being the first provider to crowd

source network improvements.”

IaaS offers virtualized servers, storage and network

resources delivered as a service from a purchase

pool of compute infrastructure to support on demand

provisioning for development and testing, short

projects or to address seasonal requirements.