Virgin Mobile France
French Mobile Telecom Operator Makes the Right Call by Subscribing to MySQL Enterprise Unlimited from Sun MicrosystemsVirgin Mobile France, launched in April 2006, has become the fourth mobile operator in the country with over 1 million customers. The company’s success can be attributed to its expertise in four key areas: marketing, terminals, distribution network and customer service. Virgin Mobile France is run by Omer Telecom, a joint venture between the Virgin group and Carphone warehouse. Launched by Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Mobile is now the world’s leading mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) with over 11 million customers in 7 countries (UK, Australia, USA, Canada, South Africa, India and France). Customer Challenges
SolutionTo support continued business growth, Virgin Mobile France subscribed to Sun’s MySQL Enterprise Unlimited offering. In addition to regular MySQL software updates and advanced database monitoring tools, the subscription service includes year-round 24x7 technical support for an unlimited number of MySQL Enterprise databases at a low, set price. Business Results
Story DetailsMany people in Europe use more than one mobile phone, a fact highlighted in research from the International Telecommunications Union that says phone subscriptions exceed the population by 11%.The phenomenon of multiphone ownership is good news for network operators like Virgin Mobile France, of course, giving them new business opportunities in a market that at first glance appears saturated. Realizing these opportunities, however, requires more than simply aggressive marketing and pricing strategies. It needs high-performance database systems that can reliably service millions of customer-related queries every day. Virgin Mobile France, which purchases, repackages, and sells wireless services leveraging the Orange infrastructure, has relied on a LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python) to drive the business since it launched in 2006. From the beginning, the MySQL database has been an important part of the company’s success. The open source software scaled rapidly as thousands of new customers signed up for the service, reliably delivering everything from SMS messaging to billing and customer service. Xavier Nicolle, chief technology officer at Virgin Mobile France, says, “The MySQL database has powered Virgin Mobile France from the beginning, delivering great performance and the cost benefits of open-source technology.”
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Compared with other database technologies, we can reach the levels of performance we want at a lower cost. With MySQL, we believe that we have the best ratio for performance, availability, and cost on the market.
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— Xavier Nicolle, Chief Technology Officer, Virgin Mobile France
Even though the MySQL Community Edition performed well, Virgin Mobile France began to consider its options when the number of its subscribers approached 1 million. “We wanted to ensure that the database continued to support our business over the long term at low cost,” says Nicolle. As a result, Virgin Mobile France subscribed to Sun's MySQL Enterprise Unlimited commercial offering. This subscription-based service includes regular MySQL Enterprise software updates, proactive database monitoring tools and access to full 24x7 technical support. Better still, customers such as Virgin Mobile France can support an unlimited number of database applications across the organization for a single, set price – which is a fraction of the price of comparable enterprise licensing agreements. Today, Virgin Mobile France has 40 MySQL Enterprise databases running across 12 servers, managing 2.5 TB of customer data. All of these applications are supported by Sun's experienced technical staff, regular software updates, and MySQL Enterprise Monitor, an advanced GUI tool which proactively scans production systems for potential problems and performance bottlenecks. This added insurance allows Virgin Mobile to keep growing without extra concern. Nicolle comments, “Our company will continue using MySQL Enterprise Unlimited in the long term because it comes with the level of technical support a growing business requires.” The MySQL database continues to play a vital role in all the MVNO services – delivering the high performance and storage capacity required. The system, which comfortably handles thousands of queries per second, currently has more than 800 GB of data in its data tables. By better protecting the high availability of its database applications through a MySQL Enterprise subscription, Virgin Mobile France has the right IT solution to support millions more customer queries every day. Nicolle says, “MySQL Enterprise Unlimited was the right choice because we've gained great performance at lower cost than comparable database systems.” |
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