Vodafone Airtouch Faces The Challenge Of Explosive Growth With Hewlett-Packard And QStar Technologies

It's the kind of business problem most companies would pray for. Vodafone Airtouch Plc., the world's largest mobile communications company, found itself celebrating record growth — a million new customers making millions of calls, both phone and text.

Great news, but that record explosion in usage brings with it a record challenge for administration. Every call must be counted, every detail of duration and location logged, every text message tracked, every conversation noted and timed. Customers have the right not only to expect minutely detailed billing, but since expenses may only be totalled up annually, they also expect to query any aspect of that detail going back months, even years. Every single phone fact must be available in the case of complaint or investigation. In fact, for legal reasons, Vodafone Airtouch has to keep those exhaustive records for a full seven years. That's terabytes of data which, while they may never be needed, must always remain accurate, uncorrupted, and instantly available.

Furthermore, the explosive growth in customers, the massive potential traffic promised by new applications such as WAP services, and the company's own dynamic expansion into new markets all combine to ensure that the scale of that challenge will grow exponentially.