A longstanding partnership
NetCologne has been working with Telsis for more than a decade, with their collaboration stretching back to the early 2000s. What began as a relationship via a reseller gradually developed into a strategic technical partnership, centered around shared understanding and mutual trust.
“We’ve been using Telsis for a very long time,” said Frank Ewen, Engineering Lead at NetCologne. “Our first contacts go back to the early 2000s. This relationship is more than a decade old – it’s now a teenager.”
That trust laid the foundation for the next major step in NetCologne’s hosted call services: the migration to Ocean Service Manager v3.0, a fully web-based platform built on the Telsis Cloud Contact architecture.
The limitations of legacy
NetCologne’s previous service setup had become a bottleneck. A key issue was the ageing custom-built user interface, developed internally using Telsis’ API years earlier. When the developer responsible for that work left the company, it became increasingly difficult to maintain or extend the interface, and by extension, the service.
“The biggest issue was that we’d implemented a user interface ourselves using your API,” Frank Ewen explained.
“The person who coded it left the company years ago. Since then, the stack has become outdated and we couldn’t enhance functionality any more.” For NetCologne, that created a strategic barrier. Their ambitions to evolve and expand their offering were now tied to legacy code they could no longer maintain. A modern platform was needed – one that allowed NetCologne to empower its customers, simplify operations, and keep pace with growing feature demands.
The challenge
NetCologne’s existing service platform for corporate customers required an upgrade to:
- Support evolving customer needs with a richer feature set
- Simplify provisioning and service configuration
- Ensure scalability and long-term maintainability
- Integrate smoothly with internal systems, such as their statistics portal
The migration to OSM v3.0
The decision to adopt Ocean Service Manager v3.0 was about far more than features. It was about setting the stage for sustainable, long-term growth. With a fully web-based service layer, graphical call flow design via Map Studio, and support for SIP/RTP, the platform enabled a significant leap forward in capability.
“It’s the same product we sell today, but with more features and without big issues,” Frank Ewen said. “Our corporate customers now have a proper interface again… one they can really use to manage services directly.”
Importantly, the Telsis approach allowed NetCologne to migrate at their own pace. A parallel build enabled phased transitions, reducing risk and giving the engineering team room to learn and adapt. “We could build the new system beside the old one and migrate step by step,” Frank Ewen noted. “That let us start with customers with simple setups and go gradually. We weren’t under pressure.”
Another critical part of the migration was maintaining NetCologne’s bespoke internal tools, particularly their statistics interface. “We had a very specific stats interface built for key corporate customers. We needed that to keep working,” Frank Ewen said. “It wasn’t just about moving the platform, but integrating it properly. We had a lot of discussions, and the result was really good.”
The solution
Core features delivered:
- Fully web-based service configuration and self-management for customers and resellers
- Advanced call control, routing, and IVR features via a graphical interface (“Map Studio”)
- API access for customer and service provisioning
- SIP/RTP-based call handling with media transparency to support optionally HD audio
- Real-time and historical call statistics with integration to NetCologne’s internal portals
- Reseller support with custom branding and tiered access control
Technical highlights:
- Deployed on standard virtualised hardware (COTS)
- Upgraded OS environment (RHEL8 or Oracle8)
- Scalable up to 100,000 CAPS
- Horizontal scalability and built-in redundancy (N+M model)
- Future extensibility with optional Contact Centre features like WebRTC
A platform for empowerment and growth
The new system has delivered both immediate and long-term benefits. Our corporate customers are now able to build and manage their own call flows via the graphical Map Studio interface. Resellers can customise the platform through branding and role-based access. Internally, NetCologne’s team benefits from tighter integration with existing tools and a more scalable, maintainable stack.
The migration has also reduced technical debt and allowed NetCologne to consolidate around a single vendor solution – streamlining maintenance and future upgrades.
“It’s a real enhancement,” Frank Ewen added. “Customers can do everything themselves. That’s a big step forward.”
The human side of transformation
While the technology matters, Frank Ewen was clear that the success of the project rested on the relationship.
“We know what we can expect from you, and you know what you can expect from us. It’s a relationship of trust,” he said. “In other companies, you sometimes have to apologise before anyone even helps you. Here, we have a close relationship, a short line of communication, and real support.”
This trust extended into experimentation. Telsis provided NetCologne with access to a full contact centre setup for evaluation purpose – enabling the engineering team to demonstrate capabilities in a live environment, not just through PowerPoint slides.
“We could show it in our company with our own numbers, with everything,” Frank Ewen said. “That gave us the ability to move the business toward new features. That kind of support really helps.”
The benefits
- Modernised platform: Full upgrade from legacy system to a maintained, feature-rich platform
- Customer empowerment: End users can build and manage call flows themselves via Map Studio
- Operational efficiency: Unified web portal with role-based access, branding control, and integrated statistics
- Future-proofing: Foundation laid for future enhancements and optional features (e.g., WebRTC)
- Reduced technical debt: Move to a single vendor solution reduces complexity and ongoing maintenance risks
Looking ahead: contact centres, AI, and advice for others
With OSM v3.0 in place, NetCologne is already looking to the future. Internally, they’ve begun testing the Contact Centre module – and plan to explore integration with their CRM system, call recording, and potentially AI-powered call trend analysis.
“We’re already trialling the contact centre internally,” Frank Ewen said. “It’s integrated with our CRM, and we want to learn from it before we offer it externally. AI is a big topic, and we’re starting to look into call trends and recordings – but we also know not to forget the basics.”
For other businesses considering a similar transformation, Frank Ewen has clear advice: “You need to know what you can do on your own, and what you expect from a partner. If that’s clear, it’s a big step already done.”
“If you just say ‘I want a new system, please migrate my customers and make an offer’… that’s going to be expensive, difficult, and long.”
Instead, he recommends a collaborative approach – one grounded in shared planning, internal capability, and hands-on experience.