Mobile News USSD Application Development and Deployment

Overview

Shankly Technologies is a mobile value-added services provider to the telecom and media industry. Their ussd application had 40% uptime daily, slow responses, and poor menu flow. Innovura redesigned the ussd mobile news application and infrastructure architecture, boosted reliability, and streamlined subscriptions, delivering a seamless, multi-channel experience that strengthened Shankly’s market position.

Company: Shankly Technologies.
Industry: Telecoms, Media & Mobile Value-Added Services (VAS).
Services: IT Consulting, Cloud Services, Software Development & Cyber Security.
Location: Harare, Zimbabwe.

Challenge

1. Fragmented USSD Service Architecture: The USSD service faced significant architectural fragmentation, with multiple disparate applications managed by different content providers. This resulted in three distinct USSD codes (*e.g., *123#, *456#, *789#) for accessing subscriptions, forcing users to memorize and dial separate codes for enrollment, updates, or opt-outs. The lack of integration not only complicated user navigation but also introduced operational inefficiencies, such as duplicated logic and inconsistent menu structures.
   • Fragmented User Experience: Users had to navigate multiple USSD codes to interact with different content providers, leading to confusion and reduced engagement.
   • Operational Inefficiency: Maintaining separate applications for each provider increased development overhead, complicating updates, and introduced redundancy in codebases.
   • User Retention Risks: The lack of a unified process for subscription management frustrated users, resulting in higher churn rates and support requests.
2. Unstable Host Infrastructure Reliability: The application’s unreliable host architecture caused persistent downtime and service disruptions, severely impacting user trust and operational continuity. Frequent server failures necessitated constant restarts, while constrained resources and high upgrade costs exacerbated inefficiencies. This instability stemmed from inadequate infrastructure design, including poor scalability, susceptibility to hardware failures, and insufficient redundancy.
   • User Trust Erosion: Repeated outages led to reputational damage and user attrition, as clients lost confidence in service reliability.
   • Inflexible Resource Scalability: Hardware constraints limit capacity during peak demand, while vertical scaling (e.g., server upgrades) is prohibitively expensive and technically cumbersome.
3. Inefficient Scalability in Legacy Application: The legacy application’s monolithic architecture struggled to accommodate surging subscriber growth and peak traffic demands, resulting in frequent performance degradation and high user churn. Outdated systems lacked the flexibility to scale horizontally, while tightly coupled components created bottlenecks during traffic spikes. This technical debt limited adaptability, exacerbated by rigid infrastructure that resisted cloud-native upgrades.
   • Inflexible Architecture: The monolithic design lacks modularity, preventing efficient scaling and real-time resource allocation to meet fluctuating demand.
   • Resource Bottlenecks During Peaks: The inability to handle traffic spikes results in system crashes, slow response times, and frustrated users.
   • Business Impact of User Attrition: Persistent performance issues erode subscriber satisfaction, directly contributing to elevated churn rates and lost revenue.

Solution

Core Application Architecture Redesign: The fragmented USSD ecosystem was replaced with a unified, modular platform that integrates all content providers under a single USSD shortcode, eliminating the need for users to manage multiple codes. A centralized menu system was developed to streamline content providers onto the first-level menu, and subscription workflows (subscribe/unsubscribe) across providers, with dynamic routing to handle user requests. The architecture leverages microservices to decouple provider-specific logic, enabling seamless scalability for future integrations.

1. Single Entry Point: Users interact with one USSD code, with context-aware menus guiding them to their preferred content provider.
2. Centralized Subscription Management: A unified backend system handles user subscriptions, cancellations, and preferences across all providers, reducing redundancy.
3. Modular Scalability: Allows new providers to onboard rapidly without disrupting existing services.
4. Real-Time Synchronization: A centralized database ensures consistent user data and reports.
5. Redesigning the application into a modern, cloud-native architecture enabled support for elastic scalability, auto-provisioning of resources, and seamless handling of peak demand.

Host Infrastructure Reliability: The legacy infrastructure was replaced with a hybrid cloud architecture, combining the mobile network operator (MNO) data center for primary hosting and AWS for backup and disaster recovery. Auto-scaling groups were deployed in the MNO environment to dynamically adjust resources during traffic spikes, while AWS EC2 instances served as failover nodes with automated database snapshots and encrypted backups. Secure communication between the MNO data center and AWS was ensured via an AWS Site-to-Site VPN, creating a unified, resilient network.

1. Hybrid Cloud Deployment:
   • Primary Tier: Hosted in the MNO data center for low-latency user access, leveraging auto-scaling to handle demand fluctuations.
   • Backup Tier: AWS EC2 instances provided redundant compute capacity and automated database snapshots via RDS, ensuring data integrity.
2. Encrypted Communication: AWS VPN established a secure tunnel between the MNO data center and AWS, with TLS 1.3 encryption for data in transit.

Results

1. Enhanced Performance: 99.99% application availability post-migration. Response times reduced from 8s to <2s.
2. User Growth: The subscriber base grew from 900k to 1,8 million within 2 years, driven by improved menu, availability and payment options.
3. Operational Efficiency: Hybrid cloud deployment infrastructure reduced server costs by 60% while improving scalability. Database snapshots enabled rapid recovery during outages.
4. Subscriber Retention: 45% reduction in customer complaints. 60% increase in repeat subscriptions.

Technologies

1. Cloud Infrastructure: AWS EC2, VPN, S3 Storage, Multi-AZ Deployment.
2. Language: Java, HTML, JS and CSS.
3. Payment Gateway: EcoCash and SDP API integration.
4. Telecom Protocols: SMPP for SMS, Asterisk for IVR.
5. Monitoring: Zoho analytics for real-time performance tracking dashboards.