• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.158-170
• /
• 2008

In response to the changing demands of ever competitive market, SK Telecom has built a new marketing system that can support dynamic marketing campaigns and, at the same time, scale up to the large volumes of data and transactions for the next decade. The system which employs Unix-based client-server (using Web browser interfaces) architecture will replace the current mainframe-based COIS system. The project, named NGM (Next Generation Marketing ), is unprecedentedly large in scale. However, both managerial and technical problems led the project into a crisis. The application framework that depended on a software solution from a major global vendor could not support the dynamic functionalities required for the new system. In March 2005, SK telecom declared the suspension of the NGM project. The second phase of the project started in May 2005 following a comprehensive replanning. It was decided that no single existing solution could cope with the complexity of the new system and hence the new system would be custom-built. As such. a number of technical challenges emerged. In this paper, we report on the three key dimensions of technical challenges - middleware and application framework, database architecture and tuning, and system performance. The processes and approaches, adopted in building NGM system, may be viewed as "best practices" in the telecom industry. The completed NGM system, now called "U.key System," successfully came into operation on the ninth of October, 2006. This new infrastructure is expected to give birth to a series of innovative, fruitful, and customer-oriented applications in the near future.