NoSQL for Telecommunications

Overview
Customers
Benefits
Applications
Architectures
Solutions
Resources

Architect your application to deliver speedy, contextualized, and real-time data, all the time

Today’s telecommunication providers must manage a staggering amount of data that’s being generated every second of every day, in addition to supporting their OSS, BSS, and OTT applications. Couple that with the pressure to deliver value-add services for customers who can easily switch to a competitor, and you have an application environment that demands speedy, contextualized, and real-time data. That’s why these companies are leveraging Couchbase – to aggregate silos of data from different service offerings, to offload their mainframe, or to architect brand new applications that will eventually be used by hundreds of millions of users. From managing call records, subscriber information, billing, and value-add services to streaming media, Couchbase keeps up with the agility, performance, and always-on requirements these applications demand.

See the use cases and solutions powered by Couchbase

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Cisco chose Couchbase over Cassandra and MongoDB™ for its DVR-in-the-cloud application, achieving unmatched scalability and consistent 500 microsecond response times at very large scale.
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Viber replaced Redis and MongoDB™ with Couchbase to support user profile, offline message storage, push-to-talk, and more for over 530M users, reducing its total number of servers by more than half.
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Japanese telecom provider KDDI uses Couchbase to deliver over 45 million mobile customers uninterrupted service through push-button scalability.
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Verizon supports over 16K developers and 3.5M operations per second with Couchbase.
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Why Couchbase NoSQL for telecommunications

Scale: Easier, more affordable scalability

Couchbase’s network-centric architecture with a high-performance replication backbone allows the database to be easily extended while maintaining performance at scale. Unlike relational databases like Oracle and MySQL, Couchbase supports ever-increasing workloads and spikes in throughput demands. Couchbase scales (in, out, up, or down) easily and without disruption to meet these demands. Unlike MongoDB™, Couchbase won’t run out of steam when you need it most. See how Verizon’s ThingSpace platform scales to support millions of connected devices.

Blog: Scaling a Couchbase cluster for increasing and decreasing demand
Learn more about Couchbase’s Multi-Dimensional Scaling which gives you the option to separate, isolate, and scale individual database services

Performance: Better performance than any other database

While other NoSQL databases like MongoDB™ require a third-party cache – adding to both cost and complexity – Couchbase has a fully integrated read-through and write-through caching layer. Couchbase’s memory- and network-centric architecture consistently delivers the sub-millisecond responsiveness that today’s users expect. Telefónica, a global telecommunications provider, supports 50M hits per day on its video-on-demand services.

Get the competitive NoSQL performance benchmark

See how Couchbase outperforms on enterprise workloads

Availability: Built-in high availability and disaster recovery

Couchbase provides five-nines availability with built-in high availability and flexible cross datacenter replication (XDCR) capabilities that supports disaster recovery and data locality requirements. With Couchbase, you have full control over the topology – unidirectional, bidirectional, or any configuration you need. KDDI, one of the largest Japanese telecom companies, uses Couchbase to power its Business ID service which requires high availability for their millions of users.

Blog: Couchbase high availability and disaster recovery: Setting up XDCR step by step

Documentation: Couchbase availability

Presentation: Next Level High Availability with Couchbase Server 5.5

Mobile: Integrated mobile capabilities support omnichannel experiences

Couchbase is the only NoSQL database with built-in mobile support. Couchbase Mobile extends Couchbase Server to the edge with an embedded NoSQL database (Couchbase Lite) and a web gateway (Sync Gateway), enabling apps to work offline regardless of network availability, and powering use cases at the edge such as personalization, peer-to-peer messaging and sharing, and more.

Build a sample app with Couchbase Mobile

Tutorial: Getting started with data synchronization using Couchbase Mobile for offline-first apps

Flexibility: Lower costs and faster time to market

Couchbase drives the flexibility and increased operational efficiency you need to keep up with the constantly updated and changing digital communication data. Couchbase’s powerful query language allows developers to easily query JSON data using familiar, SQL-like expressions. Tightly integrated full-text search, real-time analytics, and powerful eventing services make it easy to add new features to your application on the fly without moving data into and managing dozens of database technologies, finally putting an end to database sprawl.

Learn more about N1QL, our SQL for JSON query language

Take the N1QL tutorial

Analytics: Integrated analytics capabilities for real-time data insights

The Analytics service in Couchbase reduces the time to insight on operational data and simplifies operations for analytical data pipelines. Run ad hoc queries on data for real-time results and apply real-time analytics to monitor your applications.

Blog: Using Couchbase Analytics for complex and efficient queries in a Java application

Documentation: Deploying the Analytics Service

Telecommunications applications with Couchbase

Content entitlement

Content entitlement management, including subscription-based access controls, content encryption key access and management, and parental controls. The Cisco internal platform consolidates all collaboration tools and manages user entitlements for 100B+ user sessions per year, while DirecTV supports 38M customer entitlements globally.

Mobile messaging

Store user profiles and messages with Couchbase, and scale to meet demand as user activity increases. Viber relies on Couchbase as their system of record when it comes to their mobile messaging application.

Rate limiting

Measure the usage of data and services in real time as your subscribers consume them. Trigger events when limits are reached to enhance sales of add-ons.

Location manager

Send targeted content to users based on location of their devices. BT uses Couchbase to power their customers’ set-top boxes, allowing BT to send personalized program guides and content recommendations for streaming.

Identity platform

Securely manage user IDs with Couchbase. KDDI, a leading Japanese telco, chose Couchbase to power its identity platform for its flexibility, JSON storage, performance, cross datacenter replication, and scalability.

Program guide

Manage subscription-based program content based on user access levels and make it easy to publish and find new content as demands change.

Media/content catalog

Power your telecom application with a flexible, scalable media/content catalog. Deliver content at the point of engagement – whether it’s on a mobile device, wearable, tablet, television, or set-top box.

Billing center

Consolidate multiple billing systems into a single layer, and aggregate data from different billing sources to build a single view of your customer’s billing information.

User profile

Deliver fast and seamless login, authentication, and profile management including user preferences. As the number of users, complexity of user profile data, and user experience expectations accelerate, Couchbase handles the workload and scales to meet those demands.

Mainframe offload

By caching frequently used data, response times are improved and costs are substantially lowered through reduced workloads. If your app runs on a relational database like Oracle which requires costly hardware in order to scale, or a mainframe like Db2 which charges you by the MIP, a scale-out cache that runs on low-cost servers is more cost-effective.

Personalization

Capture omnichannel customer engagements to create a single view of your customer and provide real-time, personalized updates and offers at every customer touchpoint, including cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Recommend in real time

Real-time recommendations such as, “You are reaching your data limit this month, would you like to upgrade for a nominal fee?” or “Other viewers like you are watching House of Cards once they finish Game of Thrones” only work if delivered in real time. Use Couchbase to serve cross-sell and upsell programs, online and in mobile applications.

Asset management

Enable technicians in the field to manage physical assets like network towers, antenna systems, and fiber optics. Field service applications built with Couchbase work all the time, even without network connectivity, so technicians can collect data wherever they are, at any time.