How Blackfoot Communications Increased Operational Efficiency & Enhanced Service Quality With Itential

Blackfoot Communications, a Montana-based telecommunications provider, has connected homes, businesses, and communities across the region for over 70 years.  

Blackfoot faced a challenge that’s familiar to many SPs: aging and legacy network infrastructure made innovation difficult, and manual workloads kept the team stuck.  

Legacy systems created roadblocks to progress. Some infrastructure was handled by a legacy provisioning platform that was restricted to TLS 1.0, making it difficult for the system to communicate with other applications and creating security vulnerabilities due to the lack of encryption support. To enable new features, enhance their service offerings, and increase operational efficiency, the company invested in Metaswitch solutions that could extend the possibilities with aging physical infrastructure. However, despite the new feature possibilities, the company faced significant challenges in the deployment of these new features. 

Implementing a Metaswitch feature presented a significant manual workload challenge of its own due to the xml data manipulation required — an engineer would have to reverse-engineer the API by analyzing web calls and then reconstruct XML payloads in such a way that API calls can be used programmatically. 

Faced with complex requirements and heavy manual workloads, the path toward implementing new features using Metaswitch became more difficult to see. To power their fiber expansion, solve legacy infrastructure challenges, and drive innovation in rural connectivity, Blackfoot partnered with Itential to transform their network with automation.

One of the key enablers of Blackfoot’s success with automation was Itential’s robust data transformation capabilities. The ability to seamlessly convert XML data into actionable objects allowed Blackfoot to bridge the gap between legacy systems and modern automation, enabling workflows that drive real operational impact. In addition, the low-code workflow canvas has allowed personnel to put use cases into production quickly and easily. 

Outside of the features, Blackfoot network personnel worked closely with Itential’s customer success team for enablement, including weekly guidance sessions, hands-on training, and key enablement resources. 

Blackfoot achieved key network automation goals through Itential’s:

• User-Friendly Workflow Builder: Enabled rapid creation of modular, scalable workflows through a drag-and-drop interface.
• Data Transformation: Enabled automated services to easily leverage payloads and send payloads to Metaswitch and other systems to facilitate automated operations.
• Scalability: Allowed expansion of automation efforts while maintaining change controls and detailed logs, and increased network capacity to handle higher service volumes, peak season traffic, and an effort to continue offering higher-value services across the network. 
• End-to-End Orchestration: Integrated seamlessly with Blackfoot’s infrastructure, enabling the efficient delivery of new services leveraging solutions like Metaswitch.
• Out-of-the-Box Integration Capabilities: Accelerated API integration with third-party systems from Fortinet, Cisco, Adtran, and more.