Deep Diving into Software Migration Approaches for Your Telco’s Situation

When it comes to travel, there’s a time to drive, a time to fly, and a time to sail. And sometimes your destination could require a combination of transportation modes to get there.

Telco data migration is no different. Different combinations of migration strategies fit different destinations and risk profiles.

For many telcos, migration has historically been a necessary evil: painful and risky to execute but necessary for staying relevant.

Migrating to new software enables new software capabilities for telcos and lets them switch off their legacy software, reducing expensive maintenance costs. Failing to upgrade to newer software means getting left behind by the competition as systems slow down service delivery and fail to adopt new technologies like IoT, AI, and edge computing.

However, a lot can go wrong such as multi-year migration project delays, buggy transitions, and burned out teams. This means data migrations need to be carefully planned around the telco’s and their customers’ needs. 

This article goes in-depth into each data migration approach to help telco leaders make informed decisions on the right approach to use, including:

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The 3 Migration Approaches and When to Use Them

In software migration, there are three key migration strategies:

Big Bang migrations involve migrating the entire database one-shot in a single maintenance window.

Cohort (or Phased) migrations involve splitting the database into different segments and migrating them in multiple shorter maintenance windows.

Market-led migration involves triggering a migration when a user takes a specific action. For example, they could purchase or renew their plan that is hosted on the new system which then triggers the migration for that user.

Each approach comes with distinct trade-offs that can affect migration project timelines and customer experience from migration risk levels to infrastructure requirements. 

It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive as they can be mixed and matched depending on the project requirements.

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1. Big Bang Migration

The Big Bang Migration approach is when all data and systems are migrated from legacy to new infrastructure at once in a single maintenance window, usually overnight.

While this approach can take the shortest time, it still carries some risks that need to be planned for. Mitigating this risk requires multiple exhaustive rehearsals and dry runs to prepare for the main migration along with fallback and rollback plans.

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2. Cohort (Phased) Migration

A Cohort (Phased) Migration involves migrating customers in defined batches, based on geography, product line, or customer type.

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3. Market-Led (Event-Based) Migration

Market-led Migrations are also known as event-based migrations. This data migration approach migrates customers based on specific user actions, such as new plan sign-ups or app logins, making this the most customer-centric model.

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Choosing the Right Approach: Four Decision-Making Drivers

Each telco environment is unique, and migration approaches should reflect that. Rather than defaulting to a single migration strategy in isolation, many successful projects use a combination of strategies.

For example, a telco can start with a market-led migration triggered on a customer’s prepaid top up. The telco’s postpaid customers can then be migrated using phased migration before finally doing a big bang to catch everything else before shutting down the legacy system.

To decide the right blend, consider these four factors:

Mapping these decision drivers early creates alignment across technical and commercial teams, preventing costly reversals down the line.

After deciding the combination of data migration strategies, it helps to consider the other aspects of planning data migration: data rationalization and customer experience.

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Planning the Migration: What Data Actually Gets Migrated?

Data Rationalization

Not all data is created equal. Deciding what to migrate is one of the most important parts of planning your software transition.

Data rationalization refers to the process of reviewing, filtering, and preparing only essential, clean, and actionable data required for migration to the new system. 

To identify the right data, detailed data mapping and product rationalization will be done to remove obsolete, duplicated, or irrelevant data. This process also involves aligning old data formats with new system schemas, and ensuring the integrity and readiness of critical customer, billing, and product data. 

Rationalization ensures a smoother cutover, supports future scalability, and helps shut down legacy systems quickly to reduce operating costs.

Critical data categories to consider include:

The goal should be minimizing service disruption while enabling future capabilities. That’s why many telcos choose to do the following if possible:

Delta migration tooling is critical here. Delta migration allows teams to only move what's changed since the last sync. This dramatically reduces data load, especially during event-based or phased migrations.

Meanwhile, product catalog rationalization should happen before migration, which is discussed below.

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Product Catalog Rationalization

Product catalog rationalization is a huge task when it comes to mapping to new products, but it offers telcos great business clean-up opportunities during the migration planning process.

Most legacy product catalogs are bloated with unused SKUs, outdated bundles, and technical debt. There’s no need to replicate everything from the old system “as-is” as it only increases complexity and slows down future agility.

Product rationalization involves removing or combining multiple telco products that are not in use into one while aligning new products to the future telco brand’s positioning. 

This work needs to start early. Product, marketing, IT, and migration teams must collaborate on a SKU mapping plan that:

This handles the data mapping and rationalization aspect of the migration, but it’s important to consider the impact on customer experience especially when it comes to the telco digital app.

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Planning for Customer Experience: Bridging App and Service Layers

The three migration strategies each have an impact on disruptions caused by maintenance window length and the frequency of service disruptions. But there’s also the app strategy to consider. 

Newer systems may need to work with existing digital apps, while other telcos could consider upgrading everyone to newer apps. Regardless, this is an important aspect as the UI and app strategy can dramatically influence churn, Net Promoter Score, and brand sentiment.

Here are two examples of data migration customer experience app strategies:

During migration, anticipate session drops, push notification misfires, or lost states during profile switching. Good migration teams work with CX and design teams to ensure:

Both these approaches can be done with any combination of the migration strategies, and the right choice is dependent on the project’s customer experience requirements.

Considering how complex telco data migrations can be, relying on experienced partners can help to alleviate some of the burden.

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What’s Next: A Partner Who Can Execute Every Migration Strategy

There is no one-size-fits-all migration, and telco migration teams need the flexibility to adapt to the appropriate data migration approach and to their telco’s needs.

The ideal migration partner will have these capabilities:

Partners with these capabilities will help to minimize risk and help to keep the data migration project on schedule, minimizing delays and their associated costs.

Having overseen the development of multiple digital telco brands worldwide, Circles’ migration teams can support all three strategies to help telco migrations succeed with minimal disruption and maximum upside.

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Closing Thoughts: Seamless Migration Gives Telcos a Strategic Advantage

It’s frustrating when telco stakeholders mistake software migration as just an ‘IT’ problem. We understand that this is a decision that affects telcos’ businesses as a whole.

When done right, a migration can improve time-to-market, customer experience, and cost-to-serve. Done wrong, it can damage brand reputation and erode hard-won trust.

As telco operators ourselves, we know the value of a migration done with minimal revenue impact with a seamless customer experience. Whether you need a rapid cutover or a multi-year phased transformation, we bring the software, services, and global operator experience to deliver predictable outcomes, faster.

Can you imagine having to work with a migration team who is unfamiliar with telco challenges? Skip the miscommunication and long-drawn out meetings by working with Circles.

Ready to map your telco’s best-fit migration strategy? Book a meeting with our team today.