Case Studies > A10 Secures and Optimizes Application Delivery for Mobile TeleSystems India

A10 Secures and Optimizes Application Delivery for Mobile TeleSystems India

Company Size

1,000+

Region

Asia

Country

India

Product

A10 Thunder ADC
A10 Networks aFleX
A10 Networks aGalaxy

Tech Stack

SSL hardware acceleration
L4-L7 load balancing
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Deep Packet Inspection Scripting Technology

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction
Digital Expertise
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Application Security
Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Cybersecurity
Remote Asset Management
Remote Control

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Sistema Shyam TeleServices Limited (SSTL) provides wireless telecommunication services under the MTS brand in India. Its products and services include voice and data, prepaid mobile broadband, high-speed data services on national highways, Wi-Fi, SMS services, auto-renewal based subscription service, live TV, video on demand service, SMS portal, caller tunes, voice portal, and entertainment. In India, MTS has over 10 million wireless subscribers and operates across 9 telecom circles, covering more than 60% of the data user footprint in India. SSTL is a joint venture between Sistema Joint Stock Financial Corporation of Russia (“SISTEMA JSFC”), the Russian Federation, and the Shyam Group of India, with over 1,500 employees currently working in the organization. The company’s objective is to leverage the advancements in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to contribute towards progressive socioeconomic change, especially in the fields of healthcare and education.

The Challenge

MTS’s network is currently used by employees, dealers, vendors, and partners. Applications are hosted at the company’s data center using a standard hierarchical zone-based architecture, with virtual router forwarding segmented and configured into areas such as DMZ, production, and management. Applications are accessed through both an internal and public interface and load balancing is done via multi-availability zones. Web applications used include IIS and Apache over Linux, and physical machines deployed include HP Superdome servers, Oracle Exadata/Big Data, and VMware hypervisor to optimize hardware resources. According to SSTL IT Infrastructure Planning team, there are approximately 1,500 concurrent sessions for CRM hosted in the data center alone, in addition to around eight other services including value-added service (VAS), NESS Application Portal (NAP) process, and web recharge. Key challenges faced include slow page response time and the vulnerability of applications to external attacks. “We needed the applications’ availability and performance to be up to mark and to meet security compliance standards,” the team mentions.

The Solution

MTS selected A10 Networks Thunder ADC line of Application Delivery Controllers with advanced SSL hardware acceleration for its data centers in Noida and Chennai. Four Thunder ADC appliances were deployed to load balance multi-application servers and utilize features including L4-L7 load balancing, web acceleration via web caching, compression, connection reuse, A10 Networks aFleX® Deep Packet Inspection Scripting Technology, access lists, session capturing, and Web Application Firewall (WAF). By enabling web acceleration and L7 feature deployment, MTS was able to see their website response was incredibly enhanced. Application performance increased significantly with a faster response time. The Web Application Firewall was effective and eliminated vulnerabilities to their applications. Another benefit from using the Thunder ADC was the ability to leverage features such as WAF and aFleX TCL scripting. This enabled MTS to consolidate multiple load balancers into fewer pairs. Applications previously hosted behind Radware, Cisco ACE, and other appliances were migrated to the A10 Thunder ADC appliances. The migration from other ADCs to A10 was easy and configuration took very little time. Application Delivery Partitions (ADPs) is a unique feature that MTS is now using. ADPs have great flexibility and are used, for example, for resource allocation, scale, and role-based access control.

Operational Impact

Swift migration from legacy products to Thunder ADC due to feature parity and easy-to-use migration tools.
The multi-tenancy and security function is also one of the interesting features MTS will use in the future to enable the company to scale without purchasing additional appliances.
Zero added licensing fees is also an advantage as MTS can use the feature as the business requires.
MTS has seen rapid year-on-year growth for the company and wanted to choose the solution which can match their growth rate for the coming three to five years without requiring future investment.

Quantitative Benefit

Eliminated application vulnerabilities.
Deployed Thunder ADC appliances to support data center expansion requirements for the next 3 years.
Accelerated server replies substantially improved end user experience.
Uptime and capacity demands achieved in conjunction with consolidation of legacy products, with features such as WAF implemented.