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Managing Director, R&D

April 19, 2023

How amaysim scaled its offerings while improving customer experience

This project was completed by Trineo before the team joined with Uncommon Purpose.  Regardless of which name is attached to it, all of our customers can count on receiving the same level of dedication, support, and expertise. 

amaysim is a mobile service provider, now with over 1.2 million customers. They’re a technology-driven company, offering DIY account management backed by online-first support. 

To uphold the core brand propositions of simplicity and exceptional customer service while executing the rapid growth plans to come, amaysim planned to make some big changes in preparation for product line growth. It was time to support amaysim’s future as an Australian telco and tech leader.

Partnering to plan for product line growth

amaysim partnered with Trineo (now Uncommon Purpose) to split up the current architecture: adding fault tolerance, configuring their new tech stack, and syncing data with core existing systems. With product line growth imminent, it was also the right time to help build out and train amaysim’s IT team.

The team transitioned amaysim’s architecture from two components into a decentralized set of interdependent systems:

  1. Frontend user-facing Rails app (My amaysim) 
  2. Backend server (EC)

Using the OAuth framework, they built out customer data management (CDM), identity services (IDP), and single sign-on services (SSO) to facilitate logging in, easy purchasing processes for customers, and authenticated data flows between these existing systems.

  • Customer frontend applications use a suitable OAuth strategy to enable inline login from any purchase funnels, so customers don’t have to jump out of purchasing flows. In other cases customers enter via the global amaysim login screen.
  • Identity Service Provider (IDP) provides user login functionality and OAuth authentication for all amaysim applications.
  • Customer Data Management (CDM) contains all user-specific, personal information unrelated to specific apps or systems within the amaysim suite of products and services. It also houses identifiers for amaysim customers in all downstream BSS applications for each vertical.
  • Event streams use AWS componentry leveraged with the Serverless framework, and are used in multiple places for communicating events across the various distributed systems.
  • Backend business systems (BSS) are a variety of core systems fronted by API gateways as an ‘anti-corruption layer’ and in most cases they also handle OAuth.

Additional modern, flexible architecture decisions included:

  • Running in AWS Sydney: The CDM/IDP system was built on Rails and runs on amaysim’s containerised environment inside of AWS and can be deployed continuously with zero downtime.
  • Intelligent location of data in preparation for product line growth: To separate core IDP and CDM information, so that even if you didn’t have any amaysim services, you could still log in and update your information. The team also architected CDM/IDP to be separated in the future (if desired) to make it safer and easier for teams to iterate on CDM without touching IDP. It’s also very easy to add a new business vertical into this model.

A move toward event-driven architecture...and speed

amaysim now also uses AWS Kinesis and AWS Lambda functions for managing change events and is transitioning from purely data syncing to more of an event-driven architecture. 

For example, if someone changes their email address in CDM, the information goes out onto a Kinesis stream, with multiple Lambdas retrieving and updating different downstream APIs in their required formats. Instead of waiting to make multiple synchronous calls to update APIs, the process is decoupled. With various strategies to ensure fault tolerance, updates will always be shared, with eventually consistency.

Anyone can come along and subscribe to that event stream and update their system as they need to. This architecture helps amaysim move faster as systems grow and allows more responsive applications for customers.

Rapid growth, happy customers, and enabled teams

Due to the new flexible, intelligent architecture, amaysim was able to spin up a new businesses rapidly—adding broadband, energy (electricity and natural gas), and device sales to its portfolio—going from one product line to four. 

Customer service has also improved. With new customer service tools that deliver pre-filled forms, customer service reps can switch to simply verifying information rather than asking customers for their data; a much faster, less error prone and friendly way to provide service.

Previously, amaysim could only complete one release a month; now they’re able to execute multiple zero-downtime releases a day, and the number is accelerating. This is enabled by having distributed systems that are easier to work on, with newer technology supporting them. 

A strategic advisor for long-term success

Uncommon Purpose’s consulting team presents a complete set of perspectives in working with clients. We work to develop a concept and vision of customer experience, design and technical architecture. We then derive and marshal a backlog of work with agile techniques.

The end result is a timely and high-quality delivery to production, and a partnership that ensures success in the long-term.