Plivo > Case Studies > Advania Overcomes Carrier Outage with Plivo's SMS API

Advania Overcomes Carrier Outage with Plivo's SMS API

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
Sensors - Utility Meters

Applicable Industries

Buildings
Electrical Grids

Use Cases

Water Utility Management

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Advania is a Nordic IT services provider with its headquarters in Stockholm. The company has a presence in six northern European countries and generates several hundred million dollars in annual sales. Advania’s roots date back to an office equipment repair business founded in 1939 in Reykjavik. The company has about 650 employees in Iceland out of more than 3,500 total. Advania operates a system called INNA, used by 90% of colleges in Iceland, which allows colleges to manage tuition, attendance, and fees, and lets teachers share documents with students.

The Challenge

Advania, a Nordic IT services provider, faced a significant challenge when a service provider’s network went down for several days. This outage affected INNA, an application used by 90% of the colleges in Iceland for managing tuition, attendance, fees, and document sharing. INNA also had a feature to send SMS alerts to students, which was crucial for notifying students about class cancellations. The SMS service, which had been set up around 20 years ago, was prone to occasional outages and message backlogs. However, the situation became critical when Vodafone’s SMS service, the texting provider, broke down for several days, crippling INNA’s ability to send messages. Advania needed to quickly find an alternative texting provider to incorporate into INNA.

The Solution

In response to the challenge, Advania developed an interface on top of Plivo’s SMS API that emulated every service provider’s APIs. This made it easy to replace the existing service with Plivo. Plivo’s API documentation was a key factor in its selection, as it was easy to understand and allowed for quick implementation and the addition of complexity later. The new system was up and running in just two days. Plivo’s ability to send callbacks from its API to the application was another significant benefit. This feature allowed someone at the schools to check the status of the messages, a service that the local vendors weren’t providing. The integration of Plivo with INNA was simple, requiring tech support only once. Since migrating INNA to Plivo, Advania has used Plivo for other products, such as its visitor reception system Visita.

Operational Impact

The integration of Plivo’s SMS API into Advania’s INNA system brought about significant operational improvements. The new system eliminated the issue of message backlogs that occurred when a large number of messages were sent out simultaneously. The ability to check the status of messages was a huge step up, bringing in a level of service that the customers weren’t used to. The integration process was simple and required minimal tech support. Furthermore, the issue with a local telco that was blocking SMS messages from Plivo was quickly resolved. The successful integration of Plivo’s APIs not only made Advania’s college customers happy but also benefited Advania’s business by allowing them to take a small margin.

Quantitative Benefit

INNA texting was back in service just two days after a service provider outage.
Advania was able to quickly implement Plivo's SMS API, with messages going out in production on the second day.
Advania has expanded the use of Plivo's SMS API to other products, such as its visitor reception system Visita.