Case Studies
Success in speeding up data processing of a PBX service with 50,000 users while suppressing initial costs
Yamashita Christian / System Department Development Manager
Fumio Hirose / Corporate Sales Planning Manager, Business Headquarters
Maria Harina / 2nd Sales Department (International)
Sevinchi Mart / Systems Department Development Manager
Elina Higa / Service Planning Manager, Advertising Department
Sergio Kasuga / Systems Department Director
Brastel celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. They are a business that focuses on international wire transfer services and communication services. Not only have they been working on “IP of data and video”, but they have also been focusing on “IP of audio”, and Brastel released the “usage model” IP business phone service “Basix” in 2007. With the purposes of preparing the data infrastructure of "Basix" and the international wire transfer service in addition to brushing up the reporting system, and with the objective of adding voice functionality by utilizing Google Cloud products, Cloud Ace’s provided support through our Google Cloud compatibility evaluation service “Cloud Doctor” and Google Cloud implementation service “Cloud Booster”.
System overview and issues
Mr. Kasuga:
We wanted to make our system the easiest to use, so we developed all systems and services in-house without outsourcing.
Currently, on-premise systems are used as the main database for managing data such as the huge call history generated by our PBX service and international wire transfer service. Those services have 50,000 users. However, there was an issue where it was not possible to provide high-quality service usage reports to management.
Mr. Hirose:
The PBX service provided by our company provides the customer with a platform to operate their service on. More companies have moved to call centers and telework due to Covid, so there is an urgent need to build a data center for data analysis to meet this demand.
Effects of introduction
Mr. Kasuga:
By storing call data, billing data, and transaction data of international wire transfer services in BigQuery and developing a Data Studio report, quick and high-quality reporting has become possible. We used to spend around half a day visualizing data in Excel, but this project allowed us to significantly cut back on the time and labor required for this process.
In addition, taking advantage of building services on the cloud, it is possible to add and develop functions that meet customer needs with a sense of speed. This time we added speech-to-text and other audio recognition functions on Google Cloud.
Mr. Hirose:
This project worked on the call center service of a movie theater, and until now it was only compatible with the automatic answering function (IVR), but there was a request to make it IP. By switching from an analog system to our Google Cloud based system, we were able to apply voice recognition to automatically serve customers’ inquiries.
Since it would have been difficult to build from scratch, we had Cloud Ace assist us along the way. We used Google Cloud modules to keep initial costs low, and we were able to efficiently and quickly build the system.
About the Cloud Ace service
Mr. Kasuga:
We introduced Google Cloud to the PBX service for the first time last year. It took time, and there was the risk of design mistakes due to misunderstandings. However, thanks to Cloud Ace's "Cloud Doctor", we received explanations from experts on the details of the product. This allowed us to reduce the required labor and have confidence in its security, along with other factors.
This time, due to the circumstances of the project, the construction period was a very tight schedule of about 3 months. Since it was a short-term development with little development experience using Google Cloud, the support of Cloud Ace was very encouraging.
By having an environment where it was easy to ask questions using platforms like Slack, they answered our questions quickly and set up online meetings as required, which led to quick solutions.
Future developments
Mr. Kasuga:
We were able to extend the data reference period from three months to one year, but some customers are looking for more.
Considering the development of services and solutions in the future, we assume that the currently on-premises databases will eventually be operated on the cloud, so it is necessary to have quick development while suppressing costs.
Mr. Hirose:
Using the knowledge we gained from this project, and by modifying development, we were able to keep costs low while answering our clients’ needs. We would like to continue improving our systems our services by actively implementing Google Cloud products where appropriate.