Nortel Networks

Nortel Networks Reduces Project Development Time and Improves Customer Service with Informatica Data Integration Platform

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"Only Informatica PowerCenter enabled us to enlarge our integration perimeter. The performance offered by this platform is higher than expected and allows us to envisage even more extremely promising prospects."

— Sébastien Brette, Infocentre Manager, Nortel Networks

Fast Facts

Customer
Nortel Networks is a recognized leader in innovative telecommunications technology solutions

Informatica Solution
Informatica PowerCenter

Benefits

• Improved responsiveness of customer support and R&D teams
• Increased efficiency in testing new software
• Greatly reduced processing time for growing data volumes

Nuts and Bolts

• Data Integration: Informatica PowerCenter
• Sources/Targets: Clarify, Sybase, SQL Server, Oracle, Business Objects

Nortel Networks develops the communication technologies and infrastructure to implement end-to-end broadband, Voice over IP, multimedia services and applications, and wireless broadband for customers in more than 150 countries.

The Challenge

Nortel had been using a data integration solution that extracted data from its CRM solution and used it to create data marts. This solution also provided point reporting, for instance, allowing the customer support group to field customer questions about the company's telecommunications network software. However, this tool offered limited development capabilities, performance, and stability. Increasing project loads resulted in greater processing complexity and an exponential increase in processing time and volume.

Nortel needed a platform sufficiently reliable, robust, open, and scalable to handle increasingly
complex development projects more quickly. And it needed to deliver outstanding customer
support on its software and equipment.

The Solution

Nortel selected Informatica PowerCenter as its comprehensive data integration platform because
of its performance on benchmark tests and excellent customer references. With PowerCenter in
place, Nortel completed 100 data migration projects and then optimized PowerCenter parameters
to further enhance performance and to enable the company to update its data marts several
times a day.

Informatica PowerCenter now extracts data relating to various customer support situations, including problem identification, problem solution, follow-up and identification of necessary software patches. PowerCenter then aggregates this data and passes it on to the appropriate individuals and teams.

During its first year in operation, use of the PowerCenter platform grew considerably. PowerCenter now integrates all data relating to Nortel's GSM, GPRS, UMTS, and CDMA product lines into its data warehouse, which consists of 10 data marts.

Results

Improved Responsiveness of Customer Support and R&D teams
Using this aggregated data warehouse information, customer support representatives have become more responsive to customers. The representatives have visibility into the progress of current projects so they can deliver accurate, timely support to customers. Nortel managers are also able to track the course of a project from the initial customer or R&D functional request through to the production and implementation of the new function, tracking how the inquiry was handled, by whom, what teams were involved, and the technical capabilities required to implement the function.

Increased Efficiency in Software Testing
The Informatica data integration platform works with an internally developed solution to create and manage tests of new software, as well as to integrate data results from these tests and from trace files, for greater efficiency.

Greatly Reduced Processing Time for Growing Data Volumes
With Informatica PowerCenter as its data integration solution, Nortel was able to complete 100 migrations of data processing plans in only a month's time and process three times the amount of data in half the time. Each night, in just a few hours, PowerCenter processes and reaggregates 15 million rows of data, helping the R&D department test and optimize new software quickly and efficiently.