Managing Surging Seasonal Mobile Traffic with IBM Cloud

This post originally appeared on IBM’s cloud computing news blog and is republished with permission.

While the shift to mobile continues to change how we communicate, many of us still use text and mobile messaging to connect with the world. According to CTIA’s Annual Wireless Industry Survey, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) traffic rose 27.2 percent in 2016 with a mind-boggling 1.9 trillion messages exchanged across the U.S. The survey also found that just under of 49 percent of U.S. households are wireless-only. It’s pretty clear that MMS exchanges are eclipsing once-ubiquitous wired phone connections.

Telecommunications companies continue to evolve their IT infrastructure to keep up with the constantly growing needs of their customers. And some are turning to the cloud to manage rising data demand and seasonal traffic spikes.

Syniverse is no stranger to these sweeping changes in telecom. Syniverse has been a pioneer in mobile since the dawn of the industry, more than 30 years ago, and today we connect more than 1,500 mobile operators, enterprises, ISPs and OTTs in almost 200 countries.

Moreover, we handle up to 4 billion MMS transactions per day. As part of this, we must also manage fluctuations in data volume and demand during key holidays. For instance, Syniverse consistently sees a steep rise in MMS use during holidays, when many people share photos and graphics. As an example, from 2014 to 2016, we saw compound annual growth rate for MMS messages-per-second increase 57 percent for Halloween, 34 percent for Thanksgiving, 30 percent for Christmas and 53 percent for New Year’s Eve.

To help manage seasonal spikes in traffic, Syniverse just extended its VMware environments to the IBM Cloud. By tapping into VMware solutions on the IBM Cloud, Syniverse can quickly scale up existing VMware environments and connect to the global IBM Cloud infrastructure.

Syniverse also uses IBM Cloud to test and integrate new services into our hybrid cloud environment. As a result, billions of MMS messages reach family and friends, whether it’s a holiday or an average Tuesday morning.

To learn more about the deal, read the full announcement.