[DevoxxFR2013] Building a Complete Information System in 10 Months with Cloud: The Joe Mobile Story
Lecturers
Didier Herbault, the Chief Technical Officer of Joe Mobile, a disruptive Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) launched by SFR, brings a wealth of experience from over a decade in the telecommunications industry. With a background in web-scale architectures and a passion for applying internet-era principles to traditional telecom systems, Didier orchestrated the creation of Joe Mobile’s entire information system from scratch in an astonishing ten-month timeframe. His philosophy—“safe is risky and risky is safe”—reflects a willingness to embrace calculated risks and innovate rapidly in a highly regulated and competitive market. Under his leadership, Joe Mobile achieved a fully cloud-native stack, eliminating on-premises servers and leveraging Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for every business function, from CRM to billing.
Cyril Leclerc, at the time of the project, was Technical Director at Xebia, where he served as the lead architect and infrastructure engineer for Joe Mobile’s cloud implementation. A veteran of Java middleware and open-source monitoring, Cyril is a core committer on JMXTrans and a former contributor to Tomcat 4. His expertise in cloud automation, monitoring, and DevOps practices was instrumental in building a scalable, observable, and cost-effective platform. Since this presentation, Cyril has joined CloudBees, where he continues to advance continuous delivery and cloud-native development practices.
Abstract
In the spring of 2012, Joe Mobile set an audacious goal: to launch a fully functional MVNO in France within ten months, competing with established giants like Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom. This presentation details the comprehensive, end-to-end journey of building a complete information system—spanning customer acquisition, billing, CRM, network provisioning, and analytics—entirely on cloud infrastructure, without a single physical server in the company’s offices. Didier Herbault and Cyril Leclerc provide an exhaustive walkthrough of the architectural decisions, technology selections, cultural transformations, and financial strategies that enabled this feat. From selecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) for compute and storage to integrating SaaS solutions like Lithium for community management and SurveyMonkey for customer feedback, every component was chosen for speed, scalability, and operational simplicity. The session delves into the challenges of telecom integration, real-time billing, and regulatory compliance, offering a complete case study in cloud-native disruption. Entrepreneurs, architects, and DevOps practitioners gain a detailed blueprint for launching a technology-driven business at startup speed within a legacy industry.
The MVNO Challenge: Disrupting Telecom with Cloud-Native Agility
The telecommunications industry has traditionally been defined by massive capital expenditures, long procurement cycles, and rigid, on-premises systems. Launching an MVNO— a mobile operator that leases network capacity from a host operator (in this case, SFR)—requires integrating with legacy OSS/BSS (Operations Support Systems/Business Support Systems), provisioning SIM cards, managing real-time rating and billing, and providing customer self-service portals. For a new entrant like Joe Mobile, these requirements posed a formidable barrier: building a traditional system would take years and tens of millions of euros.
Didier Herbault’s vision was to apply web-scale principles to telecom: treat infrastructure as code, leverage SaaS for non-differentiating functions, and build only what provides competitive advantage. The goal was to launch with a minimal viable product in ten months, using cloud to eliminate hardware lead times and SaaS to avoid building commodity systems. Cyril Leclerc was tasked with designing an architecture that could scale from zero to hundreds of thousands of subscribers while maintaining sub-second response times for critical operations like balance checks and plan changes.
Architecture Overview: A Fully Cloud-Native Stack
The Joe Mobile platform was built entirely on AWS, with EC2 for compute, RDS for relational data, ElastiCache for caching, S3 for storage, and CloudFront for content delivery. The core application was a Java/Spring Boot monolith that evolved into microservices as the codebase grew. RabbitMQ handled asynchronous messaging between services, while Hazelcast provided distributed caching and session replication. The frontend was a single-page application built with Backbone.js and RequireJS, served through CloudFront for low-latency delivery.
The billing system was a custom real-time rating engine that processed CDR (Call Detail Records) from SFR’s network, applied plan rules, and updated subscriber balances in PostgreSQL. Amazon SNS/SQS orchestrated event-driven workflows, such as sending SMS notifications for low balance or plan expiration. Elasticsearch powered search and analytics, with Kibana dashboards for operational visibility. CloudWatch collected infrastructure metrics, while JMXTrans exported application metrics to Graphite for graphing and alerting.
SaaS Integration: Leveraging Best-of-Breed Solutions
Joe Mobile adopted a “buy before build” philosophy, integrating SaaS solutions for every non-core function:
- Lithium for community forums and customer support
- Zendesk for ticketing and knowledge base
- SurveyMonkey (now Momentive) for customer satisfaction surveys
- Mailchimp for email marketing
- Google Workspace for collaboration
- Xero for accounting
- Stripe for payment processing
This approach eliminated the need to develop and maintain complex systems for HR, finance, marketing, and support, allowing the engineering team to focus on the core telecom platform. Integration was achieved through REST APIs and webhooks, with Zapier used for rapid prototyping of automation workflows.
The 10-Month Timeline: From Idea to Launch
The project was executed in four phases:
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Months 1–2: Foundations
Cyril Leclerc provisioned the initial AWS environment, set up CI/CD with Jenkins, and implemented infrastructure as code with CloudFormation. The team adopted Git for version control and JIRA for issue tracking. Core services—customer portal, billing engine, and CRM—were scaffolded. -
Months 3–5: Core Development
The billing engine was built to handle real-time rating for voice, SMS, and data. The customer portal was developed with Backbone.js, allowing users to manage plans, view usage, and top up balances. Integration with SFR’s provisioning systems was achieved via SOAP APIs wrapped in Apache Camel routes. -
Months 6–8: Scaling and Hardening
Load testing with Gatling validated performance under 100,000 concurrent users. Auto-scaling groups were configured to handle traffic spikes. Chaos Monkey (inspired by Netflix) was used to test resilience. Security was hardened with AWS WAF, Shield, and IAM roles. -
Months 9–10: Launch and Stabilization
Beta testing with 1,000 users identified edge cases. The marketing site went live, and the first SIM cards were shipped. Post-launch, the team operated in war room mode, resolving issues in real time.
Cultural Transformation: From Telecom to Web Speed
The most profound change was cultural. The team adopted agile practices with two-week sprints, daily standups, and retrospectives. Pair programming and code reviews ensured quality. Feature flags allowed safe rollout of new capabilities. The absence of physical servers eliminated traditional ops tasks, freeing engineers to focus on code and automation.
Didier Herbault’s credit card became a symbol of the new culture: in the first two months, he personally funded AWS, Papertrail, and other services, bypassing bureaucratic procurement processes. This “just do it” mindset permeated the organization, from engineering to marketing.
Financial Model: OpEx over CapEx
The cloud-first approach transformed the cost structure. Instead of €10 million in upfront hardware, Joe Mobile spent €100,000 in the first year on AWS and SaaS. Reserved instances reduced EC2 costs by 40%, while spot instances handled batch processing at 90% discount. The total cost of ownership was 70% lower than a traditional setup, with the added benefit of infinite scalability.
Outcomes and Lessons Learned
Joe Mobile launched on time, with 99.99% uptime and sub-second response times for critical operations. The platform scaled to 500,000 subscribers within 18 months. Key lessons:
- Cloud eliminates barriers to entry in capital-intensive industries
- SaaS accelerates time-to-market for non-differentiating functions
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast—agile, empowered teams are essential
- Start small, iterate fast—MVP first, perfection later
Conclusion: Cloud as a Disruptive Force
Joe Mobile’s ten-month journey from concept to launch demonstrates that cloud, when combined with SaaS and agile practices, can disrupt even the most entrenched industries. Didier and Cyril’s comprehensive approach—technical, cultural, and financial—offers a complete playbook for entrepreneurs seeking to build world-class systems at startup speed.
Links
Hashtags: #CloudNative #MVNO #SaaS #AWS #DevOps #TelecomDisruption #DidierHerbault #CyrilLeclerc