Informática El Corte Inglés and Terremark Help the Dominican Republic Launch its Number Portability Service in Record Time

Mobile voice services have taken off in Latin America and the Caribbean, making mobile telephony the fastestgrowing telecom market and revolutionizing telecommunications for people in the region. According to Latin American Mobile Voice and Mobile Data Market (8th ed.), rapid growth in coverage and in subscriber numbers has resulted in approximately 5 million 3G wireless subscribers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean by early 2009. Mobile penetration has reached about 80 percent—well above the world average, which was about 58 percent in early 2009. With rapid growth comes a need for number portability, and Spain’s Informática El Corte Inglés (IECISA) is playing a key role in helping countries implement their systems. The El Corte Inglés Group includes 13 divisions and has more
than 100,000 employees around the world. IECISA is a leading provider of technology consulting, IT solutions, and IT services across a wide range of market sectors in Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

A Challenging Number Portability Launch

In January 2009, Indotel, the Dominican Republic’s state agency responsible for regulating and overseeing the country’s telecommunication market, began the country’s process to implement number portability. The agency requested bids from firms around the world to manage the project, which called for mobile-to-mobile and fixed-tofixed portability services to be implemented in approximately six months, by July 2009. One of the firms asked to bid was IECISA, which had successfully deployed Spain’s number portability system a few years earlier. Based on its portability software application and IT services expertise, IECISA won the project.

With less than six months to launch the new system, IECISA began seeking a hosting provider that could host its application and provide disaster recovery capabilities across locations in Spain, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. The hosting provider also had to be carrier-neutral to meet Indotel’s requirements. IECISA also wanted a strong partner that was financially stable with a proven reputation. After evaluating numerous providers, only one already had facilities in the three desired locations and provided complete carrier neutrality. Terremark provides top-tier datacenters in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, combined with access to massive and diverse network connectivity from more than 160 global carriers. It delivers a comprehensive suite of colocation, managed hosting,
cloud computing, disaster recovery, and security services from these datacenters, including those located in Madrid, Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), and Miami. In addition, Terremark datacenters are built to be exceptionally robust and hurricane-resistant, which was a critical factor for IECISA in choosing a datacenter located in a Caribbean nation.

Implementing The Platform Globally

To host its number portability application, IECISA selected Terremark and its managed hosting service, powered by Infinistructure™, Terremark’s next-generation utility computing solution. Terremark managed hosting delivers utilityenabled, managed infrastructure that offers revolutionary levels of flexibility and scalability. The Terremark digitalOps® service delivery platform also simplifies management with a live control center, including service ticketing, system configuration data, performance trending and reporting tools, and a comprehensive monitoring and availability interface. The Terremark team worked hand in hand with IECISA to deploy the number portability application across locations in three countries.

The datacenter operated by Terremark in the Dominican Republic aggregates connections from the country’s mobile operators, either directly or over the Internet. Data is sent over an Internet Virtual Private Network (VPN) link to the Madrid datacenter for processing. The Dominican Republic datacenter also maintains an Internet VPN connection to Terremark’s NAP of the Americas facility in Miami.

The Madrid datacenter provides the web, application and database servers that process number portability transactions, maintain records, and provide storage and backup. A completely mirrored environment is maintained and continuously replicated in the NAP of the Americas facility in Miami. In the event of an outage, the entire site fails over to the Miami datacenter over the Internet. The Miami datacenter also functions as a testing site for new applications.

“We worked as a team with Terremark as they deployed the systems and we worked with our customer to deploy the portability software application,” said Marcelo Comino, Director of International Operations for IECISA. “At Terremark the platforms were already integrated and ready, which greatly simplified and accelerated our deployment. Throughout the project we received excellent communication and proactive support from Terremark.”

Massive Connectivity with Carrier Neutrality

Terremark is not itself a carrier, yet it provides direct links to more than 160 of the world’s telecommunications companies through its facilities. Dominican Republic carriers connect directly to the IECISA number portability application through Terremark’s carrier neutral datacenter, meeting a key Indotel requirement.

Right Places At The Right Time

No other hosting provider offered carrier neutrality across three global locations. Terremark was able to help IECISA deploy its application, storage, and disaster recovery infrastructure as easily in Madrid and Santo Domingo as in Miami. Premium engineering, support, and monitoring services are offered to each facility, and with three global locations, the implementation has built-in redundancy. Terremark also provides bilingual support to IECISA and its Indotel customers.

On-Time Delivery

The Terremark Infinistructure utility computing platform provides IECISA with easily scalable computing resources while Terremark staff manages all aspects of the infrastructure. Because IECISA did not have to buy, deploy or manage systems itself, it was able to meet an aggressive time-to-market deadline. After a brief testing period the number portability service went live on October 1, 2009. “When you are searching for a hosting provider, you hear all of the promises,” said Mr. Comino. “With Terremark, we receive proactive information, highly responsive service, and no surprises. Terremark went beyond simply delivering on its promises.”