Canadian telecommunications giant Telus recently hit a data-modernization milestone with public cloud provider Google and platform provider Onix that sets the carrier up to better take advantage of its vast data resources and also provided Telus’ technical team with a couple of tips others could use as they attempt similar modernization programs.

Telus’ data modernization efforts stemmed from an initial agreement with Google in 2020. That 10-year agreement was based around Telus using Google Cloud to assemble a multi-access edge computing (MEC) service running on the hyperscaler’s Anthos platform and plans to move core IT and network infrastructure to the No. 3 public cloud.

The recent milestone included Telus moving its on-premises data resources from disparate locations into a unified platform running in Google Cloud’s public offering. This involved upgrading data pipelines and migrating more than 14 petabytes of data from siloed legacy systems to Google Cloud over a three-year period.

Jaime Tatis, chief insights officer at Telus, explained to SDxCentral that the move consolidated customer data from more than 100 data sources spread across Telus’ operations into a central data hub running in Google Cloud. This process allowed Telus to comb through those data sources and eliminate more than 30% of unneeded data, which helped to reduce per-usage costs, reduce its overall energy consumption, and have easier access to relevant data.

Tatis said that the operator went into the project with a clear objective of not biting off more than it could chew. This meant an initial focus on specific modernization projects that could prove a viable financial outcome.

“We didn't want to do a big bang approach. I find that usually doesn’t work most of the time,” Tatis said. “When I talk with other companies who are struggling on their modernization, I meet companies that come to visit us and they ask, ‘hey, we've been trying to do this for five, six years. We're nowhere done. What are we doing wrong?’ And in many instances, what I find is they're trying to make the big bang happen.”

Tatis noted that this approach can overwhelm modernization plans and, perhaps worse, cause consternation up the financial chain.

“It's very hard to understand the gains that you're getting because it becomes a cost exercise,” Tatis said, adding that this can be challenging for a CFO. “They just see a bunch of money being spent without either cost reduction or revenue increase coming from the business lines.”

Telus worked through this challenge by focusing on specific initial modernization plans that could meet financial outcomes, “show the value, get the interlock with the CFO office and whole nine yards, and then continue moving along on that journey,” Tatis said.

Telus touts flexible change and management Tatis also noted that it was key for Telus to remain flexible as it works through this multi-year journey.

“You have a mindset that this is the plan that I'm going to have for two, three years, but in six months a monkey wrench is coming at you because the technology changed,” Tatis said. “So now you recognize that was a good idea six months ago, but now all these things change.”

Tatis noted that Telus got into a rhythm that they were always going to be changing plans and that you need to have a plan in place to allow for the work that has been done to now adapt to a new plan. Tatis termed this as a plan to keep the modernization going.

“Because you modernize up to now, that doesn't mean that's going to still be modern two, three years from now, so you have to keep evolving that every single time,” Tatis said.

This requires a flexible architecture that allows for easier portability of progress and systems as new technology comes onto the scene.

“You need to have a flexible architecture, flexible connectors to be able to allow you to keep modernizing,” Tatis said. “You don't want to anchor yourself in something that is going to be really hard to move from, you want to work with technologies and solutions that allows you to move quicker.”

In Telus’ case, this included using Google Cloud’s native tools that were easier to upgrade. “The beauty of that is they take care of upgrading, so for us it’s more transparent,” Tatis explained. “We get the upgrade and they have easy ways you can move to it, so that simplifies life for us.”

That simplification was also boosted by Telus’ focused work with Google Cloud, which reduced the overall management of the upgrade and ongoing data management.

“Some companies have 25 different logos in their solution, but that's going to be hard to manage,” Tatis added. “You want to ensure that you have options, and you can always use the best available up to a degree that allows you to still be agile and don't have to move 25 levers at any single moment to get you where you want to be.”