Java Enterprise: Does Your Telco Solution Really Need It?
8 Ways How Java Enterprise Can, Sometimes, Be Superior to Other Technologies in Telecom Software Development
Java Enterprise has gained massive popularity over recent years. This computer programming technology does not need to be advertised. Java EE has been widely used to create a plethora of systems that serve various purposes. It is unlikely to be sidetracked by any other technology in the enterprise space in the foreseeable future. However, when it comes to one's business situation, the choice of the development technology for a project is often swayed by factors other than a technology's capabilities and advantages, or their importance for one's industry specifics.
Legacy systems and their underlying technologies, a dearth of experts, and, even, your CTO's personal qualifications, experience, or preferences can all make you decide it favor of something not so optimal for your business purposes. Telecom solutions, and, in particular, Billing software, are no exception.
Telco solutions are known to be developed using a diverse array of technologies and their various combinations. While each one of those technologies may have its advantages and disadvantages, Java Enterprise remains, in our opinion, the most viable choice for anyone who wants to build a robust, fail-safe, secure, and well-performing Telecom software solution.
Why?
Advanced Logging Functionality
First of all, Telco systems are never used in a standalone manner. In order to implement a full-value Telecom solution, you need to develop and integrate together an entire array of software systems (Ordering, Billing, Rating, Provisioning, Self-Care and so on), as well as ensure their seamless interaction. This means that, unless specifically taken care of, your solution will lack sufficient fail-safety: an error occurring in one of your Telecom applications will, most likely, be replicated and multiplied across all, or most of the apps that make up the solution.
With most programming technologies, you will have no clue as to which of your apps is responsible for the malfunction. The fallout can be a waste of time, considerable extra effort, significant additional costs, downtime, damage to your business reputation, or, even, a law suit.
In this kind of situation, Java Enterprise can easily spare you both any unwanted costs and hassle. It provides a logging synchronization capability that allows you to quickly track an error to its source.
Better Processing Power Due to Greater Interfacing Ability
Telecom as an industry is distinctive of a large number of extremely resource-intensive operations, performed at regular and frequent intervals.
Each of these operations can dramatically increase the workload on your servers, cause them to perform a lot more slowly, and eventually worsen severely the user experience for a large number of users.
Java Enterprise has proven to be extremely effective in solving this problem. The technology provides a number of interfaces for working with relational and other databases. It makes it possible to employ micro services for the creation of a distributed system that can then be used to run the more resource-intensive operations on separate servers.
Enhanced Security
Major Telco solutions tend to have a rather convoluted structure and involve very complex user hierarchies. The vast majority of system users neither need, nor can be allowed to access, manage, or modify the bulk of the data the system contains.
In this sense, implementing multi-layer access control for the whole of your solution architecture is both a dire necessity and a very significant technical challenge. Unless, of course, you opt for using the powers of Java Enterprise, and, more specifically, those of its ESB bus capability.
ESB bus allows you to retrieve data on a user's behalf in accordance with their clearance without granting the user access to the system core. Moreover, Java Enterprise allows implementing access control on two different levels: the system level and the user one.
Enhanced Control over System Development and Expansion
The Security & Control functionality of Java Enterprise becomes all the more valuable in the case of Telecom software. This happens due to Telecom systems' size: most Telco applications are major affairs, often developed by scores of IT professionals and multiple development teams. Often, several software development providers are involved.
Our experts have taken part in several major IT project recovery efforts in the Telecom sector. Due to this, we have quite a good idea about how bad things can sometimes get when there is no proper system control in place. The seemingly endless patchwork of varying code that has often been contributed to by several generations of developers, is very difficult to sort out, figure out, or straighten out.
With Java Enterprise, you can always determine who can be held responsible for a piece of crummy code, or approached for a better explanation or assistance.
Enhanced Fail-Safety
We have already mentioned that Java Enterprise can render your Telecom solution more fail-safe by making it much easier to correct errors. However, this is not the only capability of the technology that can help enhance the fail-safety of your Telco solution.
Java Enterprise has a modular structure. This structure allows creating clustering solutions. If required, it is possible to instantly transfer a workload from one module to another. In other words, when one module fails, another one comes to its aid and takes its workload over, thus preventing any possible disruption to the system's performance.
What better guarantee of fail-safety could one really wish for?
Better Suitability for Portal Creation
If your Telecom software development project includes creating a portal, you will definitely find Java Enterprise to be very helpful. This is mostly because Java Enterprise includes several libraries of prefabricated and localized widgets (such as, for example, Liferay) that can greatly facilitate your portal development effort, while also sparing you both any localization costs and part of your development expenses.
Faster Speed of Development and Time-to-Market
The speed at which your project is implemented is always of importance from several points of view.
Project deadlines alone are enough to make the development speed a major factor in the technology selection process. However, besides any investor-imposed and other deadlines, there is one more important thing one should bear in mind. In most instances, overextended project timeframes translate to hefty additional expenses: the faster you implement your project, the less you will have to pay.
From this perspective, Java Enterprise is a very cost-effective choice. It gives your software developers the ability to create cache servers. The latter can speed up the development of your product very significantly.
Solutions on the Cutting Edge of Technology
It is common knowledge that Java Enterprise allows building extremely complex software systems and embodies leading-edge technical ideas. However, relatively recently, this ability of Java has been further enhanced due to the technology becoming open-source.
Open-source technologies are known to develop at a significantly faster rate than most other programming technologies. They tend to quickly absorb any valuable technical ideas and approaches that emerge out there.
Thus, by making Java Enterprise your technology choice, you ensure that your Telco solution (provided it is properly maintained and updated by your software development partner) has great odds to stay technologically advanced for years to come.
Disclaimer: The present article reflects solely the subjective viewpoint the SYTOSS Development Team on the topics, covered herein and does not represent an advice to buy or not to buy, or use or not to use any software product or technology.