Cloudera and AWS Drive iForte’s Data Transformation and Efficiency

PT iForte Solusi Infotek (iForte) is a telecommunication infrastructure and internet service provider specializing in connectivity and ‘tower fiberization’ linking cell towers using optical fiber cables. As a Protelindo subsidiary under Hartono Family ownership through PT Sarana Menara Nusantara, Tbk, it focuses on top-tier connectivity to empower customers in the global market. iForte aims to enhance Indonesia’s economic landscape by leveraging digitalization, creating opportunities for workers, and solidifying its role in the country’s economy. With a growing economy and large population, connectivity, and communication services are critical to Indonesia. 

iForte is committed to providing the highest-performing and most reliable services possible to its customers, primarily corporate clients, telco industry partners, and businesses that require reliable connectivity services. To ensure their success, they rely heavily on business intelligence (BI) and data analytics to expedite operational processes and decision-making. 

The journey to best-in-class BI began in 2021 as an effort to replace slower, inefficient manual processes. Chandra Aprely, VP of Business Intelligence and Data Analytics for Protelindo, was tasked with developing and driving a digitization strategy. He started by improving their view of the sales pipeline and creating an overall strategy for migration to the cloud, one of the first companies in Indonesia to embark on that journey.

iForte Elevates BI and Data Analytics with Cloudera on AWS

iForte continues to grow and evolve its BI and data analytics capabilities as its business leaders have recognized the impact of having near real-time data available in an easy-to-use dashboard format. 

The focus has been on three prominent use cases and business processes: 

1. Order to Cash Cycle improvement; 

2. 360 Degree View that provides telemetry for all parts of the business; 

3. Performance Monitoring for tracking team performance and programs against established goals. 

With Cloudera on AWS, iForte has the flexibility and scale to access more data faster than they could previously.  With new visibility and insights obtained from near real-time data and analytics, iForte continues to innovate new business processes and deploy them in the cloud.  

Now, iForte has the flexibility and scale to receive the most value from their data. Cloudera on AWS makes the processes of migrating workloads and utilizing data in the public cloud efficient, secure, and manageable. 

This has accelerated new use cases and projects to enhance data governance, including data ownership, definitions, cleansing, and validation processes.  

Cloudera on AWS generated key insights from the cloud data faster and with less effort, and this encouraged cross-functional collaboration to share insights and best practices within iForte and has expanded the plan to use machine learning algorithms to uncover insights and drive actionable recommendations.

The iForte solution starts with collecting data from in-house applications (e.g., CRM) and tailored 3rd-party apps, either on-premises or cloud-based. 

The data is first ingested into Talend, which unifies processes for rapid data integration, transformation, and mapping with automated data quality checks. The integrated data is pushed from Talend to Cloudera on AWS. In Cloudera, data is processed with various engines including Apache Spark and Impala. The architecture runs on AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and its supporting components. 

From there, the data is visualized in iForte’s dashboards, leveraging Microsoft Power BI and Hue Analytics to provide fast data discovery, intelligent query assistance, and seamless collaboration.

Cloudera and AWS Drive Innovation and Efficiency for iForte Through Close Collaboration and Strategic Partnership

Cloudera and AWS collaborated closely with the iForte team and took the time to truly understand their needs and priorities.  Working with all the business operations stakeholders, everyone began to focus on the same objectives. As results were realized, key stakeholders sought to apply new methods to other business processes and use cases.  

The conversations and focus shifted to 'the art of the possible' by opening everyone’s eyes to the new capabilities with Cloudera on AWS. For example, even though iForte is a very capital-intensive business, for years, they lacked the ability to measure the backend financials quickly – due to vast volumes of data and highly manual processes. Now, they have real-time visibility and have enabled more ownership and accountability across functions.

Cloudera has also been a valuable partner by helping to address technical issues when they arise.  The Cloudera team’s post-implementation services provided valuable support, optimizing performance and resolving issues promptly. 

iForte is also set up for scale, as AWS provides the cloud infrastructure for the Cloudera hybrid data platform. This enables iForte to speed up deployment and provide scale using AWS infrastructure in the CGK Region in Indonesia. 

Just months after moving to the public cloud, iForte was able to focus on new use cases, potential growth, and other ongoing considerations. With the strong partnership between iForte and Cloudera, new capabilities and optimizations were developed that enabled iForte to harness and realize even more value from the massive amounts of data flowing through the business. With Cloudera on AWS, iForte has the scale, flexibility, and data capabilities they need to deliver on their vision.

About Cloudera 

Cloudera accelerates digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises by helping innovative organizations across all industries transform complex data into actionable insights faster and easier with hybrid data platform, secure management, and portable cloud-native analytics to drive value and competitive differentiation. Visit https://www.cloudera.com to learn more.

About AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. Discover more at https://www.amazon.com