Does your system need to absorb an acquisition?
IT system migration service
The five-step method, generalised, with its risks and scope.
View the pageMigrating Stella Telecom's systems into Celeste without service interruption
Celeste, a French operator dedicated to businesses, has grown through acquisitions. As Lead Developer alongside the tech lead, I am migrating Stella Telecom's connectivity into Celeste, working with the other teams including telephony: customers, links, catalogue, billing, then the infrastructure cutover, without service interruption.
Migration ongoing
At a glance
- Role
- Lead Developer, supporting the tech lead
- Status
- Migration ongoing
- Scope
- Stella Telecom's connectivity into Celeste
- Stack
- Laravel, PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, Docker, microservices, API Platform, Claude Code
An operator absorbing the operators it acquires
Celeste is a fibre, cloud and cybersecurity operator for businesses. It has acquired several operators, including Stella Telecom, and migrates their customers, technologies and information systems into its own.
I am on assignment at Celeste as Lead Developer, supporting the tech lead. I migrate Stella's connectivity into Celeste, working with the other teams, including telephony.
The Stella Telecom acquisition, as reported by Le Monde Informatique (in French)
The challenge: changing systems without the customer feeling it
The information system, the catalogue and the billing all have to change without interrupting the service of businesses that depend on it. And without asking them to do anything complicated.
The connectivity technologies involved
Each Stella customer uses one or more types of access. The migration has to take over every one of them. Here is what each acronym covers, in general terms.
- FTTO
- Fiber To The Office: an optical fibre dedicated to a business site, designed for professional use.
- FTTH
- Fiber To The Home: an optical fibre that reaches the subscriber's premises, on a shared network.
- Copper
- Access over copper pairs, the historical technology of DSL lines, still present at many customers.
- 4G and 5G
- Access over the mobile network, used as primary access or as a backup where fibre is missing.
The migration in five steps
Each step prepares the next. The order starts from the customer and their contract, and ends on the infrastructure.
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1Administrative migration
Bring Stella's customers into Celeste's information system.
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2Link migration
Take over each customer's connectivity accesses.
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3Catalogue mapping
Build, with the business teams, the matrix that links each Stella product to its Celeste equivalent.
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4Billing migration
Move billing to Sage X3.
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5Infrastructure cutover
Planned behaviour: the customer only has to restart their router. The new provisioning installs itself, and they keep using their services without interruption.
Migration ongoing: no results published
The migration is ongoing. This page describes the method and the planned behaviour of the cutover, not a review. I publish no results here.
Stack and skills
- Laravel
- PHP
- JavaScript
- MySQL
- Docker
- Microservices
- API Platform
- Sage X3
- Claude Code
- IT system migration
- Catalogue mapping matrix
Common questions about this migration
Is the migration from Stella Telecom to Celeste finished?
No, it is ongoing. The page describes the method, with no results.
What is a catalogue mapping matrix?
A table that links each product in the source catalogue to its equivalent in the target catalogue, built with the business teams, so that each customer finds their offer and their billing.
What does migrating without service interruption mean?
The customer keeps their services throughout the change of system. For the infrastructure cutover, the planned behaviour only asks them to restart their router.
My company is acquiring another: can you help?
That is the purpose of the IT system migration service, which generalises this method to your situation.
Keep reading
A completed migration, on another system