Globe Telecom Drives Scalability and Visibility with AppDynamics on AWS

For Philippine telecommunications company Globe Telecom (Globe), delivering a robust customer experience is a top priority. To enhance monitoring for its web and mobile services and continue modernizing on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Globe procured solutions from AWS Partner AppDynamics and began migrating to an AppDynamics software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution on AWS. 

Globe delivers mobile and internet services, facilitating digital experiences and supporting businesses. The company has a mobile customer base of over 81 million and a broadband subscriber base of over 4 million. “Globe’s main objective is to make its customers happy,” says Joseph Manalang, Service Operations Intelligence Center Lead at Globe. “This includes subscribers and corporate customers.” To deliver high-quality user experiences, Globe must effectively monitor application performance to rapidly resolve issues. Manalang’s team focuses on event monitoring, instrumentation engineering, operational capacity reviews, and information technology operations insights and is committed to reducing the time it takes to detect and escalate performance-related alerts. 

To gain insight and optimize application performance, Globe turned to the Business Observability Platform from AppDynamics. Globe initially engaged AppDynamics in 2014 and began running AppDynamics on premises. In 2015, in response to a new cloud-first policy, Globe began migrating its AppDynamics infrastructure to AWS to improve scalability and performance. Globe also relied on AppDynamics to monitor its broader migration to AWS. As Globe pursued modernization, including implementing containers and microservices, and developed a focus on real-time end user monitoring, it looked to AppDynamics to help it improve visibility across its cloud infrastructure. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital consumption in the Philippines and required Globe to further hone its digital experience. “It was about giving Globe the ability to deliver strong application performance and embrace its digital journey as well as run the right business campaigns,” says Matt Campion, Solution Engineer at AppDynamics.

In late 2020, at AppDynamics’ suggestion, Globe turned to AWS Marketplace—a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from AWS Independent Software Vendors that makes it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS. The procurement solution could help Globe simplify billing and optimize costs through a private offer, an AWS Marketplace feature that buyers can use to negotiate pricing and terms with sellers. “Purchasing through AWS Marketplace would help Globe meet its AWS committed spending through its private offer,” says Manalang. By purchasing AppDynamics in AWS Marketplace, Globe accelerated procurement and gained agility. The solution brought together stakeholders from different Globe teams, helping them learn the process and develop a standard operating procedure.    

“Now that processes have been established, we’ve created a baseline for the procurement team that will support future purchases in AWS Marketplace,” says Manalang. The procurement solution also increased speed to market for AppDynamics. “The direct agreement with us, prior to the current deal, probably took 6 months to conclude,” says Paul Medway, Enterprise Commercial Lead at AppDynamics. “Using AWS Marketplace shortened that process significantly. Once Globe understood the mechanics of AWS Marketplace and we’d agreed on the terms, it was about a 3-week process.” Globe completed its purchase in AWS Marketplace in early 2021. “Once the procurement process was initiated and established, we acquired the solutions in 1 day,” says Manalang. In addition to the software, the company gained benefits, such as project management services and educational subscriptions. Globe also received cost savings, including a waiver for the SaaS conversion fee amounting to about five percent in license savings plus a license cost avoidance of around $184,000.

Globe is now using AppDynamics for application performance monitoring, mobile and browser real user monitoring, synthetic monitoring, infrastructure visibility, and database monitoring, as well as for transaction, browser, and mobile analytics. “We’re pleased with our AppDynamics engagement, which provides a complete team, including customer success and professional services, to help us continue building capabilities,” says Manalang. Globe is migrating to an AppDynamics SaaS solution on AWS and expects to be formally migrated within six months of initial implementation. The cloud-hosted AppDynamics solution will support visibility into application performance while reducing maintenance and facilitating scaling on AWS.   

Globe is already seeing benefits. Using AppDynamics on AWS, Globe can detect and remediate issues much more quickly. Globe reduced its target time to detect and escalate alerts by 26 percent for tier one critical systems, and by 45 percent for non–tier one systems. For both system categories, Globe now commits to a target time of 11 minutes or fewer. Using AppDynamics on AWS also contributed to a 24 percent reduction in mean time to repair for the company’s service management operations. And because Globe is modernizing on AWS, it can regionalize its infrastructure, thereby reducing risk and protecting service continuity in the face of natural disasters. “Using AWS as our backbone helps us become more resilient in case we encounter disasters in the future,” says MC General, Head of the Information Technology Vendor Management Team at Globe. “That’s what we really want: for our customers not to encounter or feel disruptions."

Globe’s ongoing monitoring projects center on two key goals: detecting potential issues before customers feel them and predicting and mitigating incidents before they happen. To this end, Globe is establishing a proactive monitoring rate, which will capture its ability to detect incidents before customers do. Manalang expects the maturity of Globe’s solutions on AppDynamics and AWS to help support new business capabilities and proactive business decisions. “We’ll likely see more benefits after we complete our full migration to the SaaS environment,” says Manalang. “We’re looking to go beyond information technology operations monitoring to supporting our key business stakeholders and making data available for their use.” At the same time, AppDynamics is interested in helping Globe use its business observability capabilities to better understand conversion funnels and solve business problems.