By close of September 2022, MTN support services across all 19 operations would have been migrated from the Huawei Service Delivery Platform (HSDP) to a new business support system (BSS) called MAD API.
MADAPI is a platform designed to run MTN’s services under the key pillars of its Agenda 2025 strategy, particularly the digital, Mobile Money, MTN Business, and API marketplace (Chenosis). This is separate from its legacy network services.
The platform will among other things, give all MTN’s partner service providers access to Open APIs to facilitate new service creation and delivery.
This means that all of its external communications service providers (CSPs), otherwise known as content providers (CPs) or value-added service (VAS) providers are being migrated to the new platform where their USSD, SMS, mobile money integration and other services on MTN will be run.
This is in line with the groups revised Ambition 2025 strategy aimed at making MTN a complete platform player by the close of year 2025.
Delays
The Africa telecoms giant had originally targeted the first quarter of the year to have completely migrated from HSDP to MADAPI but suffered some set back.
However, in a circular to all of its Opcos across Africa, the group office noted that the delay in migration had had significant business and resource impact across the group and all operations, adding that no more delays will be countenance.
“We will be switching off the WECA (West and Central Africa) hub [including Ghana] as well as central nodes at the end of September – we cannot delay any longer as there is a cost and resource impact as well as security risk,” the circular stated.
The Group also noted that the delay in migration has also caused a setback in the roadmap of digital services rollout, and that is not good.
It stated that by the close of September, Huawei’s support for the HSDP will no longer exist, adding that it is therefore important for all Opcos to ensure complete migration of all services and CPs in order to continue to enjoy further support.
The circular said once the migration is completed, all Opcos will be required to focus for the remaining months of the year on rolling out new services as per the roadmaps to ensure “we start 2023 strong.”
Pumping some OXYGEN
In recent webinar, MTN Group Chief Information Officer, Nikos Angelopoulos explained that the company wants to deliver digital services in high growth areas including Mobile Money (MoMo) and its API marketplace called Chenosis, which provides a market of APIs across industries including communications, financial services and entertainment.
However, success will depend on MTN addressing issues that are all too familiar to many CSPs/VAS partners, and they include lack of 360-degree customer information that can be quickly analysed, disunified customer experience, and difficulty partnering with third parties on new business models.
MTN’s technology team therefore put in place a framework called Oxygen to help make systems simpler for third parties and its own business lines to use and to improve operational efficiency. Oxygen represents 28 programs spanning network, IT, operations, digital services and enablers. If executed properly, it will transform MTN from a telecoms company to a technology company, according to Angelopoulos.
MAD API
A key element of Oxygen is the “MAD API” platform, which Angelopoulos said “is our internal name for creating an environment where everything is able to connect with everything through an API. It allows applications anywhere in the organization to reuse common APIs to create experiences, to create processes, to try things. Everything we are going to do in next four years will be built with MAD API in mind. Everything … will be interacting in one way or another through our MAD API platform.”
In Rwanda for instance, MAD API has since 2020 been rolled out by WhaleCloud to transform MTN Rwanda’s BSS, deploying 76 APIs and delivering nearly 1,000 feature points. Rwanda is currently reporting significant improvement in customer experience since the migration to MAD API and no less is expected in Ghana and other Opcos come September ending.
