Modernizing Telecom Legacy Applications with MongoDB

The telecommunications industry is currently undergoing a profound transformation, fueled by innovations in 5G networks, the growth of Internet of Things applications, and the rapid rise of AI. To capitalize on these technologies, companies must effectively handle increasing volumes of unstructured data, which now represents up to 90% of all information, while also developing modern applications that are flexible, high-performance, and scalable. However, the telecommunications industry's traditional reliance on relational databases such as PostgreSQL presents a challenge to modernization. Their rigid structures limit adaptability and can lead to decreased performance as table complexity grows.

With this in mind, this blog post explores how telecom companies can modernize their legacy applications by leveraging MongoDB’s modern database and its document model. With MongoDB, telecom companies can take advantage of the latest industry innovations while freeing their developers from the burdens of maintaining legacy systems.

Navigating legacy system challenges

Legacy modernization refers to the process of updating a company’s IT infrastructure to align it with the latest technologies and workflows, and ultimately advancing and securing strategic business goals. For telecom companies, this modernization involves overcoming the limitations of their legacy systems, which hinder adjustment to changing market conditions that demand greater system scalability and availability to run real-time operations.

The main drawbacks of legacy technologies like relational databases stem from their design, which wasn’t built to support the data processing capabilities required for modern telecom services. These limitations, as illustrated in Figure 1 below, include rigid data schemas, difficulty handling complex data formats, limited scaling ability, and higher operational costs for maintenance.

Figure 1. The limitations of legacy systems.
The limitations of legacy systems includes 4 categories. The first is hard to change, which features the description Rigid data schemas that hinder the ability to adapt to evolving business needs. The second category is untapped data, which is described as Mobile, IoT, and AI applications produce data types difficult to handle with relational databases. The third category is fragility & downtime, which is described as legacy systems not built for the scale and uptime demanded by today's 24/7 data streams. The final category is high costs, expensive hardware, increasing costs as workloads grow, and costly licensing fees.

Expanding on these limitations, relational databases depend on a predefined schema, which becomes difficult to modify once established, as changes entail extensive restructuring efforts. In telecommunications, handling growing data volumes from connected devices and 5G networks can rapidly become burdensome and costly due to frequent CPU, storage, and RAM upgrades. Over time, technology lock-in can further escalate costs by hindering the transition to alternative solutions. Altogether, these factors hold back modernization efforts urging telecoms to transform their legacy systems to newer technologies.

To overcome these challenges, telecom companies are replacing these legacy systems with modern applications that effectively provide them with greater scalability, enhanced security, and high availability, as shown in Figure 2. However, achieving this transition can be a daunting task for some organizations due to the complexity of current systems, a lack of internal technical expertise, and the hurdles of avoiding downtime. Therefore, before transforming their outdated systems, telecom companies must carefully select the appropriate technologies and formulate a modernization strategy to facilitate this transition.

Figure 2. Characteristics of modern applications.
This diagram showcases 6 characteristics of modern applications, which are advanced use cases, massive scale, always on, available everywhere, secure, and responsive.

Getting onboard with MongoDB

Enter MongoDB. The company’s document-oriented database offers a flexible data model that processes any information format, easily adapting to specific application requirements. MongoDB Atlas—MongoDB’s unified, modern database—delivers a robust cloud environment that efficiently manages growing data volumes through its distributed architecture, ensuring seamless connectivity and enhanced performance.

Moreover, as telecom providers prioritize cybersecurity and innovation, MongoDB includes robust security measures—comprising encryption, authentication, authorization, and auditing—to effectively protect sensitive information and ensure regulatory compliance. Additionally, leveraging MongoDB’s document model with built-in Atlas services like Vector Search, Atlas Charts, and Stream Processing allows telecommunications organizations to streamline advanced industry cases, including single customer view, AI integrations, and real-time analytics.

Figure 3. Core MongoDB modernization features for Modernization.
This diagram showcases 4 core MongoDB modernization features. The first is the document model, which is described as the flexible data model that accommodates to unstructured data and adapts to evolving schemas. The second is availability, which is described as built-in replica sets with self-recovery properties that ensure the resilience of your modernized apps. The third is scalability, which is described as horizontal scalability through sharding to handle the ingest of large data volumes. Finally, the fourth feature is vector search, which is described as operational database and vector embeddings into a single platform, enabling advanced AI solutions.

Recognizing these benefits, leading telecom companies like Nokia, Swisscom, and Vodafone have successfully modernized their applications with MongoDB. However, selecting the right technology is only part of the modernization process. In order to ensure a successful and effective modernization project, organizations should establish a comprehensive mod

  1. Data-driven modernization: this approach transfers all data from the legacy system to the new environment and then migrates applications.

  2. Application-driven modernization (all-or-nothing): this approach executes all reads and writes for new applications in the new data environment from the start, but leaves the business to decide when to retire existing legacy applications.

  3. Iterative modernization (one-step-at-a-time): this approach blends the previous paths, starting with the modernization of the least complex applications and incrementally moving forward into more complex applications.

Read this customer story to learn more about telecoms migrating to MongoDBL

With this overview complete, let's dive into the migration process by examining the iterative modernization of a telecom billing system.

Modernizing a telecom billing system

Telecom billing systems often consist of siloed application stacks segmented by product lines like mobile, cable, and streaming services. This segmentation leads to inefficiencies and overly complex architectures, highlighting the need to simplify these structures. With this in mind, imagine a telecom company that has decided to modernize its entire billing system to boost performance and reduce complexity.

In the initial stage, telecom developers can assess the scope of the modernization project, scoring individual applications based on technical sustainability and organizational priorities. Applications with high scores undergo further analysis to estimate the re-platforming effort required. Later on, a cross-functional team selects the first component to migrate to MongoDB, initiating the billing system modernization. This journey then follows the steps outlined in Figure 4:

Figure 4. The modernization process.
The modernization process begins with an analysis of legacy system, then goes to create end-to-end tests, then to design architecture, then rewrite & add code, then user testing & fixing, and ends with migrate data & deploy.
  1. First, developers analyze legacy systems by examining the codebase and the underlying architecture of the chosen billing system.

  2. Then, developers create end-to-end tests to ensure the application functions correctly when deployed.

  3. Later, developers design an architecture that incorporates managerial expectations of the desired application.

  4. Next, developers rewrite and recode the legacy application to align with the document model and develop APIs for MongoDB interaction.

  5. Following this, developers conduct user tests to identify and resolve any existing application bugs.

  6. Finally, developers migrate and deploy the modernized application in MongoDB, ensuring full functionality.

Throughout this process, developers can leverage MongoDB Relational Migrator to streamline the transition. Relational Migrator helps developers with data mapping and modeling, SQL object conversion, application code generation, and data migration—corresponding to steps three, four, and five. Additionally, telecom companies can accelerate modernization initiatives by leveraging MongoDB Professional Services for dedicated, tailored end-to-end migration support. Our experts work closely with you to provide customized assistance, from targeted technical support and development resources to strategic guidance throughout the entire project.

Building on this initial project, telecom companies can progressively address more complex applications, refining their approach to support a long-term modernization strategy.

Next steps

By revamping legacy applications with MongoDB, telecom companies can improve their operations and gain a competitive edge with advanced technology. This shift allows telcos to apply the latest innovations and free developers from the burdens of maintaining legacy systems. Start your journey to migrate core telecom applications to MongoDB Atlas, by visiting our telecommunications solutions page to learn more.

If you would like to discover how to upgrade your TELCO legacy systems with MongoDB, discover how to start with the following resources: