The Nucleus program is one of Vodafone’s largest data projects. It’s a multi-year international program whose initial goal was to deliver enhanced data and analytics capabilities, based on a unified data warehouse (DWH) cross OpCo’s, in the Google Cloud Platform.

Vodafone Portugal was the pioneer in this project, which basically consisted in migrating their DWH to the cloud. Vodafone’s decision to carry out this project was to have a unique DWH structure and, as Portugal was the most complex and quite complete location, it was chosen as the pioneer.

The initial Pilot Project started in Vodafone Portugal in late 2019.  In 2020 the team refined the program vision and overall technical architecture, kicking off at full power in late 2020. Nucleus VF-PT Go live happened in June 2023.

All the program teams worked very hard over the last 3 years, being able to deliver increments of value to the customer across intermediate deliveries, with Vodafone recognition. Celfocus level of engagement grew over time, in terms of scope of the participation across distinct domains throughout program streams. This allowed Celfocus to showcase the ability not only to deliver, but also to manage and successfully govern a variety of program streams, growing and conquering both delivery and governance space.

This program delivers enhanced data and analytics capabilities in the Google Cloud Platform, combining several technologies from Google Cloud Platform ecosystem, like Composer, Data Fusion & Dataproc, BigQuery, and Data Studio.

• Cost - Significantly decrease D&A TCO across Vodafone Group, overcoming the current local non-scalable infrastructure models
• Fragmented Architectures - Normalize the variety of local DWH & Data Ecosystem’s implementations and related BI & visualization tools across markets
• Localised operating models - Standardize WoW for creating or updating business data needs which would increase the pace of change and cost efficiencies
• Significant decrease in data duplication & shadow BI - Increase quality of BI data, currently based in inconsistent, multiple and dispersed data warehouses per country with complex and costly data operations
• Data driven - Augment the ability to present relevant information and drive recommendations, currently being limited by local capabilities and data inconsistencies across markets
• Performance improvement and scalability – Processes performance were increased when compared to the previous on prem solution, with data being delivered faster and earlier. GCP also enables high scalability when deemed necessary.

The experience acquired in Nucleus VF-PT allowed us to gain relevant business volume in VF-Group IT and D&A, by participating in strategic projects, as the basis for future Nucleus programs in upcoming OpCo’s.

Nucleus VF-PT allowed Celfocus to participate, gain expertise and consolidate the solutioning of DMaaP (Data Movement as a Platform, covering both batch and real-time ingestion features over kafka based mechanisms) on the GCP ecosystem, including a Data Quality & Reconciliation Framework, Cost Control Dashboard, monitorization.

Celfocus is now monetizing this in other business opportunities, namely on Vodafone Germany, NOC CIAS Cloud Migration, Vantage Towers, CGD, among others. Additionally, the experience acquired has reinforced our partnership with Google and contribute for the visibility of Celfocus with several success stories being shared.

Regarding this project, these are the main goals for 2023:

• Finish Nucleus VF-PT and establish well-supported AD & AM streams from Celfocus’ side
• Support VF in Nucleus BAU strategy (adding Raw to CIM development)
• Consolidate Nucleus with other Vodafone Markets & streamline operations
• Establish & increase Celfocus footprint in Group D&A and IT, specifically in the UK, IE, DE, and CZ, alongside CMS and DQM teams
• Initiate Nucleus 2.0 rounds
• Conquer AtScale, Dynamo, and Looker Studio Pro space
• Leverage PEGA (AoM) initiatives in Group and in VF-DE
• Increase and spread cloud knowledge in all teams.

Congratulations to the team for their excellent work!