Dual Version PortaSwitch

Gradually update PortaSwitch with minimal inconvenience and service disruption for end users and reduced engineering effort.

What is Dual Version?

Dual Version of PortaOne's PortaSwitch is a solution that allows you to “jump” over multiple Maintenance Releases.

With Dual Version you can:

Migrate users to a newer version of PortaSwitch within a few minutes (vs. a few hours).
Reduce pre-migration engineering effort compared to traditional updates.
Benefit from new features and launch new products, even while your migration is in progress.
Limit rollbacks to small customer batches if issues arise.

Software update doesn’t need to be risky

Whether or not to update a critical software platform has always been a tough decision for CSPs. Every telco business has its own unique combination of features, network configurations, legacy code, and customer settings, making any software migration a complex and anxiety-filled challenge.

Previously, telcos faced two less-than-ideal choices options:

Option 1

Keep your service unchanged while your system gets out of date, your third-party apps stop working, and your competitors edge ahead with new products.

Option 2

Update your software at the risk of high costs, massive team resource drains, and long service disruptions for customers.

Traditional software updates often present a maze of challenges:

Engineering overhead

Extensively testing every possible scenario for all customer types is time-consuming and, despite efforts, flawless outcomes remain elusive. Individual customers might also possess unique configurations that only become apparent post-update.

Constrained update flexibility

Typically, updates permit transitions only between consecutive long-term support (LTS) releases, like from MR100 to MR105. With LTS releases emerging approximately every nine months, and considering the prep and testing phase, staying current with the latest release and its features can be a challenge.

Dilemma during crises

Should a critical issue arise, you're often stuck between a rock and a hard place: either roll back updates system-wide, incurring downtime, or navigate a sea of customer complaints while attempting large-scale fixes.

With Dual Version you can:

What you get with Dual Version from PortaOne

Seamless platform updates from start to finish

Migrate your customers to the newer version in small batches, with minimal downtime and contained risk.

Faster results with fewer resources

Dual Version allows you to jump quickly over large PortaSwitch release gaps with minimal involvement from your in-house engineering team.

A tried and true platform from a expert engineering team

PortaOne has been providing a reliable foundation for telecoms for more than 20 years. Scroll down for testimonials from just a few of our 500+ global customers!

Streamlined Migration

WebDispatcher ensures seamless API integration for external applications.
RADIUS and Diameter dispatchers route charging requests accurately, eliminating the need for configuration changes.
Migrate smaller resellers and representatives swiftly and efficiently.
Benefit from auto-sync: reconcile vendor xDRs, rates, and more in one step.
No customer equipment reconfiguration, courtesy of our dispatching SBC.
Seamlessly shift between on-premise PortaSwitch and the cloud.
Get comprehensive analysis of your legacy customizations as part of Pre-Migration Analysis (PMA).

Comparing Dual Version and traditional update methods

	Dual Version update	Traditional update
Maximum number of releases per jump	Unlimited*	5
Additional hardware required	Yes	No
Engineering time and effort required for pre-update testing	Medium	High
Service disruption per customer	Up to several minutes	From 10 minutes up to 2 hours

How Dual Version works

Dual Version gradually migrates your customers in small batches from your “source” (or original) system to the target (or newer) system.

This can be done between two on-premise installations, from an on-premise installation to the cloud, or from the cloud to an on-premise installation.

This gradual process means that any compatibility issues or other complications that arise are contained to a single small customer batch. If a customer encounters a problem on the newer system, they can be moved back to the original system until the issue is resolved.

Two customers are migrated over to MR100 from MR85 in a single small pilot batch.
One of those customers reports some issues after the migration.
That customer is transferred back to MR85, while the customer who had no issues remains on the new release.
The engineering team resolves the issues that the first customer reported.
The first customer is migrated over to MR100 again, this time with no issues.
This migration repeats, each time with larger customer batches, until all of your customers are running issue-free on the newer release.

A look at the architecture of Dual Version

Dual Version from PortaOne has two core components:

The Porter code: This code transfers all of your data along with its configuration settings from your old system to the newer version of PortaSwitch. Transformations enable seamless version jumps, with any necessary temporary rollbacks to the old version affecting only small customer batches.
The DSBC: The dispatching session border controller is software that is positioned between the end users and the two versions of PortaSwitch. It directs each user to either the source (original) or target (new) system, depending on whether or not they have been migrated. This can be done without the need for any customer-side configuration changes.

Client feedback

We used Dual Version to successfully migrate our customers with little service disruption. During the migration, we were thrilled that there were zero issues during the porting process. Our customers maintained the same high-quality services they are accustomed to and we were able to ensure their continued satisfaction with our work. So far we have migrated from MR70 to MR85, and from MR85 to MR100. Now, we are planning our third jump, from 100 to 110.

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