The MASMOVIL Group: Uniting multiple IT systems via Google Cloud
About The Masmovil Group
The MASMOVIL Group is one of the fastest-growing telecom companies with the best fixed and mobile network coverage in Spain. Firmly committed to sustainability, its fixed network currently reaches 18 million homes via ADSL and more than 28 million via fiber optic connections. Its 4G mobile network is also available to 98.5% of the Spanish population.
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Contact usThe Spanish telecom company has consolidated its infrastructures in the cloud to integrate the legacy systems from its various acquisitions into one environment.
Google Cloud results
- Significant increase in production software deployment: more than 200 processes per week
- Generation and consumption of more than 50,000 events per second on an infrastructure of 20,000 pods
- Improved business performance thanks to advanced analytics and machine learning services
- 90% latency reduction
- Smaller carbon footprint: Google Cloud strengthens the company's sustainability commitment
More than 22 systems integrated into one environment
The MASMOVIL Group is the fastest-growing company in the Spanish telecommunications market. Since its creation in 2006, it has achieved rapid, sustained expansion through agreements with other carriers and major acquisitions. It now has its own fixed and mobile broadband infrastructures; and over 15 million customers.
The agreements and acquisitions were key in making the company start thinking about a technology upgrade. Each company that was incorporated into the MASMOVIL Group kept its own IT system, resulting in multiple systems being maintained at the same time.
It was clear that the MASMOVIL Group needed to integrate the data from all these systems (CRMs, billing systems, call centers, ticketing systems, network data, etc.) into a single environment that would facilitate the use of various data sources and simplify ingestion and fulfillment processes. With this goal in mind, it initiated efforts to consolidate its data processing infrastructure into Google Cloud.
Owners of their architecture
The unification project began in 2019, and used a business support system (BSS Telco) and a CRM system called MasStack. Using open-source technologies in a cloud-native environment and following a DevOps methodology enabled the development teams to control the complete lifecycle of the applications, from analysis to commissioning, operation, and monitoring.
"Integrating over 22 IT systems into just one environment could only be achieved if the developers "owned" their architecture. And Google Cloud made this possible for us: offering control via APIs and combining integration streams and continuous deployment."
—Pablo Moncada, DevOps Chapter Lead for the MASMOVIL GroupFaster value delivery
MasStack was created based on cloud-native technologies (such as Kubernetes and Istio) and on database technologies (such as Firestore and Cloud SQL). But that's not all: These were provided as managed services by Google Cloud, along with its experience and operational capacity. This allowed the MASMOVIL Group development teams to focus on faster value delivery.
As a result, the company not only reduced costs, but also increased agility. For example, it has substantially increased its production software deployment to reach 200 processes per week. In addition, thanks to the scalability offered by Google Cloud, MasStack can generate and consume more than 50,000 events per second in its Kafka-based system, on an infrastructure of more than 20,000 pods in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). In other words, Google Cloud allowed the MASMOVIL Group to manage a very large infrastructure with a small number of people.
Artificial intelligence: Key to business impact
The data structuring and scalability provided by the cloud offers the MASMOVIL Group the option to decentralize the operation of business areas. To this end, each area incorporated a data analyst capable of using the information in BigQuery and displaying it in visualization tools like Looker Studio and Spreadsheet.
It also allowed the company to easily test new agile approaches in different environments, without having to focus on how to scale fulfillment capacity. In its first few years, the company used advanced analytics and machine learning functions to categorize its customers (modeling risks, the likelihood of conversion, causality, segmentation and triggers), which had a significant impact on the success of its business.
As the MASMOVIL Group widened its available datasets in Google Cloud, it opened new use cases focused on network optimization and anomaly detection. The most recent scenario was the use of generative AI for customer interactions. Combined with Vertex AI, Google Cloud enabled a range of options: (1) several alternatives when training machine-learning models (starting from pre-trained models or having total control over the training process); (2) environments to iterate and experiment in during the development process; and (3) deploying the models in production with an MLOps methodology to automate the prediction generation and recalibration processes.
"The migration to Google Cloud in Madrid, which is better positioned from an energy perspective, brought us great peace of mind. Previously, electricity outages caused problems for our business activity. But now, with our new multi-cluster and multi-region architecture, outages no longer affect our business."
—Pablo Moncada, DevOps Chapter Lead for the MASMOVIL GroupSustainable: Reduced carbon footprint
Sustainability is one of the MASMOVIL Group's core values. In 2020, it became the first telecommunications carrier in Europe to achieve net zero Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions, and is currently working to become net zero for Scope 3 by 2040. It also had the lowest overall residual emissions level of all European carriers and was the first European telecom company—and the largest company in Spain—to achieve the B Corp Certification. Plus, it achieved a Sustainable Fitch score of 77 out of 100 in 2023, and a CDP B score.
The migration to Google Cloud in Spain, which is also carbon neutral, allowed the company to renew its commitment to the environment. Both Google Cloud and the MASMOVIL Group purchase renewable energy to cover 100% of their energy demands.
"We want to highlight the help, support and availability of the Google Cloud teams throughout this process. This enabled us to build scalable systems that were suitable for our ways of working and the growth that the company has seen over recent years."
—Irene Yusta Martin, Head of Data & AI for the MASMOVIL GroupBoth companies also work toward the efficient management and responsible use of resources. Google Cloud Data Centers use 50% less energy than most systems, yet still offer the highest levels of efficiency, performance, and availability.
Therefore, since its migration to Google Cloud, the MASMOVIL Group has not only reduced its carbon footprint, but also successfully reduced its latency by 90%. It has also ensured maximum uptime. In the event of a power outage, Google Cloud's multi-cluster operation (architecture located in several regions) would allow MASMOVIL to operate in another region, without interrupting its business.
The MASMOVIL Group and Google Cloud today
The MASMOVIL Group has now incorporated almost all of Google Cloud's services. Google Cloud stores more than 2 PB of data and provides 100% of MASMOVIL's data infrastructure. It also provides services to every area of the company, with an average of 450 users accessing BigQuery per day.
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About The Masmovil Group
The MASMOVIL Group is one of the fastest-growing telecom companies with the best fixed and mobile network coverage in Spain. Firmly committed to sustainability, its fixed network currently reaches 18 million homes via ADSL and more than 28 million via fiber optic connections. Its 4G mobile network is also available to 98.5% of the Spanish population.