Virgin Mobile UK

Answering the Call of Growing Demand with a Space-Based Service-Oriented Architecture

Since its launch in 1999, Virgin Mobile UK has attracted more than four million customers and established itself as the leading mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the United Kingdom. When Virgin Mobile UK faced the welcome challenge of skyrocketing growth, it quickly learned the hard way that a traditional server-based architecture that relied on tight coupling of services could not help them meet it. During critical sales periods, such as the run up to Christmas, even short system outages could prove costly and potentially tarnish the company's great reputation for customer service. As part of a corporate strategy to grow its online capability, the company sought a new solution that would provide both the scalability to accommodate rapid, unpredictable changes in demand and the fault tolerance required to maintain continuous availability.

Today, the new system, powered by the underlying GigaSpaces scale-out application server, has proven resiliency and dynamically scalable Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), despite the failure of some legacy components, and even when core direct sales increased by more than 300 percent.