Globe Telecom and Amdocs win Crisis Response award at the Asia Communication Awards
Globe Telecom and Amdocs recognized with industry award for their immediate and effective crisis response after the devastation of a super-typhoon.
The Asia Communication Awards’ have selected Globe Telecom and Amdocs as the joint winner of the 2022 Crisis Response Award in recognition of their exceptional, effective response to a major crisis and the extent to which their actions positively impacted the public.
What was the crisis that Globe Telecom was facing?
Massive devastation caused by a life-threatening super-typhoon bringing torrential rains, flooding, landslides, and 160mph winds included severe physical damage to one of Globe’s charging sites, resulting in 23M people being suddenly cut off from communications.
Repairing the site would take months to complete.
However, Globe and Amdocs managed to successfully restore essential mobile and data services in just eight hours, giving back critical connectivity at a time when it was needed the most.
“We are doing everything we can to serve and extend help in the affected communities."
How did they manage to respond so effectively and so quickly?
Globe was able to respond so effectively thanks to their comprehensive disaster-recovery plan with innovative fall-back capabilities which had been designed and operationalized together with Amdocs Delivery Services and Amdocs Managed Services (SmartOps) experts as part of an Amdocs Turbo-Charging update project.
- Thanks to the new disaster-recovery capabilities gained from Amdocs Turbo-Charging (now known as Amdocs Convergent Charging), Globe’s entire 86M+ subscribers (who were all located on a single charging site) could now be divided and migrated across three separate charging sites located in completely different geographical regions to reduce the potential impact of any outages.
- Globe also established an additional (fallback disaster-relief) charging site to be operationalized in the event that any of the three main sites should fail.
- To ensure the disaster-relief site could be put into operation as quickly as possible, data was continually synchronized in real time between the three production sites and the disaster relief site using a virtualization management layer to run servers, storage and software programs. Virtualization would now enable Globe to route critical platforms nationwide to ensure that essential mobile and data services would remain available, even during crisis situations.
- Globe, together with Amdocs, activated on-ground teams to carry out practice drills and disaster preparedness, as part of the recovery plan.
Why did Globe and Amdocs win the Crisis Response Award?
As soon as the site failed due to extensive physical damage from the super-typhoon, Globe and Amdocs’ disaster-recovery teams worldwide were activated and immediately began the process of operationalizing the disaster-relief site.
Thanks to efficient, thorough preparation combined with the extensive disaster-recovery capabilities embedded in Amdocs Turbo Charging and the fact that the disaster-relief site already had all the data because it had been continuously replicated in real-time beforehand, the site was already fully operational in less than eight hours: Globe and Amdocs’s disaster-recovery efforts had resulted in 100% recovery of essential mobile and data services.
Considering the technical complexities involved in achieving this, this was a major success for the multiple teams working on recovery assistance, across different time zones and countries.
“It’s important because we know communication is aid. It’s like water and electricity. You need to be able to reach your loved ones and find out what’s going on around you. To do that you need connectivity.”
Globe Of Good – the core of Globe Telecom’s extensive sustainability mission
As a digital-solutions company and in alignment with their ISO 22301 certification for Business Continuity Management, Globe, together with its community-development partners and portfolio companies, also activated multiple disaster-response and resiliency programs to keep Filipinos connected, and support them with their immediate needs through accessible digital and mobile connectivity services.
Sustainability at Globe is anchored on The Globe Purpose, “In everything we do, we treat people right to do a Globe of Good,” and aims to contribute to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) to create a Globe of Good.
