Prism Case Study: WeFi

WeFi selected SiSense Prism for its shorter implementation time, faster query response performance, lower price and more user-friendly report/dashboard design.

What is WeFi?

WeFi provides technology for optimizing and managing Wi-Fi networks both for mobile operators, as a data offloading tool in overloaded cellular networks, and for end users, to help find and enjoy Wi-Fi the optimal connections anywhere in the world. The company provides tools which allow its user community to map the global Wi-Fi network. The community has already discovered over 75,000,000 access points around the world.

What business needs was WeFi looking to solve when they came across Prism?

WeFi needed to perform advanced analysis on large amounts of data in three categories:

• The behavior of millions of WeFi users, including retention activity and data acquisition activity (13 tables in one model, with average table size of more than 5 million rows)
• The performance and activity of wireless networks to which its users are connected (the average table has more than 70 million rows)
• The activity records of active clients (average table size now exceeds 500 million rows)

How was WeFi trying to address these needs before implementing Prism?

WeFi was struggling to generate the reports required by management using manual SQL queries over a MySQL database. The SQL queries were generated by WeFi’s database team.

What other solutions did WeFi evaluate before selecting Prism?

In addition to Prism, products from two leading in-memory BI vendors were evaluated.

Why did WeFi select Prism over the alternatives?

• Business users at WeFi preferred the Prism solution, saying that they found it more intuitive.
• Technical advantages: QlikView requires that the entire data model be loaded into memory. Also, loading data into QlikView requires knowledge of a proprietary scripting language.
• Lower price.

How was the Prism implementation carried out?

A dedicated PC machine was provided to serve as the ElastiCube server. Specs: Xeon 5520 CPU, 64GB RAM, Windows 2003.

Initially, a single ElastiCube data store was created without any special design: all data sources were imported as-is into Prism. Later, additional ElastiCube data stores were added to the server.

How is WeFi using Prism to solve its business needs today?

WeFi is currently running most its business reporting and dashboards over Prism, using 6 different ElastiCube data stores.

What are the greatest business benefits that WeFi is enjoying with Prism?

• Business users have extensive autonomy to create and modify their own dashboards and reports, dramatically shortening the length of time it takes to get new data insights.
• The database team is (mostly) freed from creating new reports.
• Lightning-fast query response times allow business users to easily refine their reports, and get fast answers to important business questions.

What do WeFi's Prism users have to say about the product?

Prism took WeFi to the next level in our ability to analyze the business and strategic data on which we run our business.
—Shay Basson, CFO

One of our primary assets at WeFi is our data. Prism is a key weapon in our strategic arsenal.
—Amit Shaked, Vice President, Products and Marketing