GCP – Transforming data: How Vodafone Italy modernized its data architecture in the cloud

Vodafone Italy is reshaping its operations by building a modernized, AI-ready data architecture on Google Cloud, designed to enhance process efficiency, scalability, and real-time data processing. This transformation, powered by Vodafone Italy’s cloud-based platform called Nucleus, aims to unlock new AI-driven capabilities and streamline data management.

Nucleus, developed by Vodafone Italy’s engineering team, leverages Google’s AI infrastructure and BigQuery, along with a robust data movement application and a comprehensive ETL framework, to bring all analytical use cases into a cloud-native environment. This modern architecture enhances data agility, scalability, and AI-driven insights, while enabling Vodafone to consolidate fragmented data silos into a centralized, real-time data ecosystem. In partnership with Amdocs and Google Cloud, Vodafone Italy re-engineered its data pipelines within this flexible ecosystem to optimize operational workflows and support business-critical functions. By integrating its operational data store (ODS) and enterprise data platform(VID) on Nucleus, Vodafone Italy created a scalable foundation for analytics, AI, and machine learning.

Undertaken in only 12 months of careful planning and design, the migration to Nucleus was achieved without interruption or issue for consumers or the business.

This modernized architecture delivers key benefits, including enhanced agility, more efficient regulatory reporting, cost optimization, and improved real-time processing across core functions like finance, operations, and marketing. Moreover, Nucleus provides a blueprint for Vodafone Group’s broader cloud modernization strategy, helping to ensure scalability and future-proofing the organization’s data ecosystem.

Laying the foundation for data modernization: The road to Nucleus

In 2017, Vodafone Italy launched “NEXT”, a bold, company-wide initiative aimed at modernizing its business support systems (BSS) and data management as part of a large-scale digital transformation.

At the heart of this journey was a data management transformation, designed to eliminate inefficiencies caused by fragmented legacy systems, including Teradata, SAP, and BSS workloads, and establish a streamlined, AI-ready data ecosystem. The project focused on harmonizing data processes across finance, commercial, and operations functions to ensure greater efficiency in reporting, real-time data accessibility, and regulatory compliance.

This transformation was pivotal in enhancing scalability, governance, and agility, enabling Vodafone Italy to accelerate time-to-market for new products and leverage data-driven decision-making across the organization. Recognizing the complexity of modern telecom operations, Vodafone Italy partnered with Amdocs as its primary systems integrator, capitalizing on its expertise in BSS and data management to navigate the challenges of a highly regulated industry.

The foundation laid through NEXT set the stage for Vodafone Italy’s next leap in innovation — Nucleus — a cloud-first data platform designed to unlock new AI-driven capabilities and future-proof its digital infrastructure.

Transforming the data architecture: A unified, intelligent approach

The NEXT program marks a breakthrough in data architecture, shifting from fragmented data silos to a centralized, two-tier business intelligence platform designed for scalability, governance, and real-time insights.

Tier 1: Operational Data Store

At the foundation, the Operational Data Store (ODS) is built on the Amdocs Logical Data Model (aLDM) — a TM-Forum-certified model tailored for telecommunications. Implemented via the Amdocs Data Hub, this tier seamlessly integrates data from diverse applications in near-real-time, delivering a cohesive, 360-degree view of customer behavior and interactions across all touchpoints.

Tier 2: Vodafone Integrated Dimensional Data model

Serving as the enterprise data warehouse, the Vodafone Integrated Dimensional Data (VID) model was co-developed by Amdocs and Vodafone’s business and IT teams. It acts as a single source of truth for financial and analytical reporting, aligning with Vodafone’s governance and compliance standards. By consolidating hundreds of terabytes of data into a streamlined model with a few hundred entities, VID simplifies data governance, accelerates decision-making, and enhances operational efficiency.

Together, these tiers power mission-critical applications across the organization — enabling advanced AI and analytics, financial reporting, campaign management, intelligent customer engagement, and martech solutions. With near real-time data access and self-service capabilities, Vodafone’s teams can derive deeper insights, drive innovation, and enhance customer experiences at scale.

Nucleus: Advancing Vodafone Italy’s data modernization

With a modern data foundation already in place, Vodafone Italy sought to further enhance flexibility and interoperability within its data ecosystem. To achieve this, the company embarked on the modernization of VID, integrating it seamlessly into a broader, cloud-first architecture designed for greater efficiency, scalability, and AI readiness.

In June 2023, Vodafone Italy initiated this transformation project, setting a 12-month roadmap focused on planning, testing, and executing the evolution of this mission-critical asset. The modernization process was strategically designed to optimize VID’s integration with Nucleus, providing integrated data processing and enhanced analytics capabilities.

To drive this success, Vodafone Italy partnered again with Amdocs, leveraging its deep expertise in VID and aLDM. Together, Vodafone Italy’s engineering team and Amdocs collaborated within the Nucleus environment to accelerate the shift towards a more agile, scalable, and future-ready data architecture.

Seamless data modernization for business continuity

Vodafone Italy successfully modernized its data infrastructure by migrating to Google Cloud, leveraging BigQuery and a “clone and shift” approach in collaboration with Google Cloud and Amdocs. This meticulously planned 12-month transformation helped ensure a smooth transition without disrupting business operations, maintaining full data integrity and user experience. By replicating their existing data platform within BigQuery, Vodafone unlocked the benefits of cloud-native capabilities, including enhanced scalability, agility, and real-time insights, while gaining access to a comprehensive suite of data management tools within the Nucleus framework.

“This program has unlocked features and capabilities that were once difficult to imagine. We now have a unified data platform, and a comprehensive data ocean that natively integrates AI and generative AI. This empowers us to better serve our customers and understand their needs, protect their data, deliver real-time reporting to our sales, customer operations, and marketing teams, and significantly improve the productivity and time-to-market of our IT department.” – Massimo Guarino, Head of Digital & IT, Data & Analytics and Always-on Marketing Systems, Vodafone Italy

“The Nucleus framework we developed fully harnesses the power of Google Cloud to create new value and transform our operations. This achievement was made possible through our exceptional partnership with Amdocs, whose expertise was instrumental in delivering a seamless and successful migration. Together, we have greatly improved operational speed and adaptability, setting the stage to seize new opportunities, deepen our collaboration, and drive significant growth.” – Michele Bertoni, BI Engineering and Delivery Manager, Vodafone Italy

“Implementing a new data management solution with an aLDM operational data store and enterprise data platform layer gives Vodafone a competitive edge — improving efficiency, enhancing business teams’ experience, and increasing customer and agent satisfaction, while reducing operational costs. It’s a privilege to support Vodafone Italy’s data-driven journey as their dedicated partner.” – Eran Katz, BI Consulting and Data Architecture Unit Lead, Amdocs

In short, Vodafone Italy’s transformation journey exemplifies the power of the cloud in driving data unification, AI integration, and operational efficiency at scale. This partnership, alongside Amdocs, showcases how organizations can unlock unprecedented value through cloud-powered innovation, optimizing both customer experience and IT efficiency. We are proud to support Vodafone and Amdocs in this journey and look forward to further enabling their data-driven growth. Clear here to learn more about Amdocs and Google Cloud’s collaboration on AI and data services.