Technical overview of the DVM Migration Engine 

Executive summary and introduction

Subscription bundling has become a key growth strategy for resellers like telcos, banks, and retailers. Resellers differentiate by bundling content provider subscriptions like Netflix, Disney+ or M365. These offers are added to mobile plans, broadband deals or loyalty programs to strengthen customer loyalty, unlock new revenue streams and stand out from competitors. However, as more third-party services are added, the complexity of managing them increases significantly.

Many resellers begin by integrating each content provider directly, often building custom connections one at a time. Over time, this results in a fragmented setup, where each provider has its own APIs, rules, and business logic. This creates high operational costs. It also slows down time to market and leads to inconsistent customer experiences.

The Digital Vending Machine® (DVM^TM) from Bango brings all subscription bundling integrations into one place. It replaces scattered integrations with a single product built to manage offers, entitlements, and billing in a consistent way. Unlike other migration tools that focus on moving infrastructure, Bango specializes in subscription migration. This includes handling voucher-based activations, prepaid access, and complex lifecycle states – areas where typical migration services fall short. With the DVM, resellers manage all subscription services through one interface, reducing operational overhead and simplifying ongoing management. This makes it easier to scale their bundling strategy without increasing complexity.

To support this, the Migration Engine, a capability of DVM makes it easy to move from fragmented, direct integrations to a centralized model. It enables resellers to migrate existing subscription routes, entitlements and lifecycle logic into the DVM quickly, safely and without disrupting customer access. This also includes subscriptions that were originally activated using voucher codes or other one-time redemption methods. These legacy entitlements are mapped and brought into the DVM, allowing them to be managed consistently alongside other services, without interrupting the customer’s access.

Once migrated, existing and new content provider services can be bundled together, managed more efficiently, and delivered through a consistent experience.

In this article, we will explain how the DVM Migration Engine works, and how it helps resellers take control of their subscription bundling strategy by consolidating everything into one place.

Technical overview of the DVM Migration Engine

Migrating subscriptions is not just about moving data. It means dealing with complexity across different lifecycle rules, metadata formats, and activation methods. Without a structured process, this results in mismatched states, missing fields, and duplicate records.

The DVM Migration Engine is designed to solve these problems. It migrates live, suspended or legacy entitlements into the DVM with accuracy, consistency and no disruption to customers. It ensures data is normalized, lifecycle states are preserved, and each subscription continues to behave as expected.

Built for scale, auditability and operational continuity, the engine helps resellers move away from fragmented systems and take full control of their subscriptions.

Core architecture

• Secure file upload: Resellers deliver subscription data through uploads to a Bango-managed cloud environment. Files are integrity-checked using versioning and checksum validation – a method to ensure files are complete, unchanged and traceable for audit purposes.
• Standardized schema: All uploads must follow a shared entitlement schema that includes fields like entitlement ID, customer reference, product ID, lifecycle state and timestamps. This schema enables consistent ingestion into the DVM.
• Lifecycle mapping & partner normalization: The engine converts content provider-specificstates – such as ACTIVE, SUSPENDED, EXPIRED – into the DVM lifecycle model. It normalizes logic for voucher codes, prepaid expirations and reactivation flows, ensuring even edge cases behave correctly.
• Real-Time validation & fix files: Each record is checked for format, sequence, and field accuracy. Invalid records are quarantined and returned as fix files, allowing resubmission without blocking migration progress.
• Activation via API: Valid data is activated in the DVM using API endpoints (e.g., POST /merchant/entitlement/activate). No direct database access is used. This ensures all entitlements go through the same audited and validated process as live transactions.
• Fault Tolerance: Errors in individual records are retried with configurable backoff. If issues persist, the record is logged with reason codes, and processing continues for the rest of the batch.

These components work together to ensure migrations are reliable, traceable, and scalable – removing manual effort and reducing risk.

Migration workflow: technical execution

The DVM Migration Engine supports a structured five-phase migration plan. Each step is designed to maintain service continuity, preserve lifecycle integrity, and support accurate ingestion of high-volume entitlement data into the DVM.

1. Data preparation & upload

• Partners extract entitlement data from legacy systems, including active and suspended states.
• They map the data to conform to the DVM™️ entitlement schema, including fields such as entitlement_id, product_id, customer_reference, lifecycle_state, and relevant timestamps.
• They upload the files to a Bango-managed secure cloud location, with file validation and versioning to ensure audit integrity.

2. Testing (sandbox environment)

• Uploaded files are processed in an isolated sandbox that replicates DVM lifecycle behavior.
• This validates field-level structure, schema adherence, timestamp logic, and lifecycle transition compatibility.
• No activations occur; the goal is to simulate ingestion and verify correctness before production cutover.

3. Execution & exception handling

• Validated records are ingested via DVM APIs (e.g. POST /merchant/entitlement/activate) and processed asynchronously.
• Entitlements are handled individually. API failures are retried with exponential backoff.
• Faults are logged with reason codes. Invalid records are quarantined and returned in structured fix files for partner correction.

4. Controlled cutover

• Once validation is complete and records are clean, the DVM assumes ownership of entitlement lifecycles.
• Imported entitlements resume normal operation within the DVM, including renewals, suspensions, cancellations, and state transitions.
• Cutover is coordinated to avoid overlap with legacy system events.

5. Post-migration validation

• Final consistency checks compare source system data, DVM state, and downstream content provider responses.
• Dashboards provide visibility into entitlement state counts, processing outcomes, and any remaining errors.
• Entitlement lookup tools support partner support teams’ post-migration, backed by full audit logs and traceable event history.

Supported use cases

The DVM Migration Engine is designed to reflect the variation in how subscriptions are structured, activated, and managed across real-world systems. It supports a wide range of migration scenarios that go beyond simple active entitlements, making it suitable for large-scale, mixed-state migrations.

Voucher to subscription

Entitlements originally created through voucher codes or one-time redemptions are migrated into fully managed DVM subscriptions. These users are transitioned into a standard entitlement lifecycle without requiring reactivation or code reuse.

Prepaid subscriptions

Remaining prepaid access duration is preserved and migrated into DVM entitlements with correct expiry logic. These records are aligned with DVM standard renewal handling, enabling future monetization without manual intervention.

Suspended and cancelled states

Entitlements that are paused, cancelled, or expired are migrated with their current lifecycle state intact. This ensures continuity post-migration, allowing subscriptions to resume their expected behavior without resetting billing cycles or triggering unwanted reactivations.

Partner-specific logic

Content provider-specific behaviors – such as reactivation flags, voucher transitions, or custom suspension rules are normalized during migration. These variations are mapped into the DVM standard model to ensure consistent entitlement handling across all partners.

Real-world examples 

The DVM Migration Engine has been used by global resellers and content providers to complete large-scale migrations quickly and safely.

• A Tier 1 North American telco migrated over 500,000 entitlements to the DVM in just a few weeks. All subscriptions were preserved without a single error or moment of downtime. The process included full sandbox validation, monitored cutover, and post-migration audits to confirm entitlement accuracy. Support teams were equipped with new tools to look up and manage entitlements directly in the DVM, reducing ticket volumes and speeding up issue resolution.
• In Latin America, another telco phased the migration of three content providers, retiring its legacy systems in stages. Each phase was validated in sandbox, with learnings used to fine-tune the process. Within two weeks, the reseller had consolidated its subscription operations under one system. This gave them faster time to market, consistent business logic across all offers, and real-time visibility through DVM dashboards.

These examples show how the DVM Migration Engine delivers clean cutover, operational continuity and immediate business impact – even in complex, high-volume environments.

Conclusion

Consolidating subscriptions into one place brings real, lasting benefits. It means having a single set of rules, one integration point and full visibility over how entitlements behave – no more maintaining separate systems for each content provider or building custom logic for every new offer.

But getting there starts with migration.

The DVM Migration Engine is built to handle that step. It gives resellers a structured way to move existing subscriptions – active, suspended, voucher-based, prepaid or cancelled – into the Digital Vending Machine without disrupting customers or introducing operational risk.

Every stage of the migration process – from secure file upload and schema validation to lifecycle mapping, entitlement activation, and post-cutover reconciliation – is designed for scale, operational continuity, and data accuracy. Teams can test in sandbox, use fix files to resolve issues, and manage cutover in controlled phases, all with full visibility and audit traceability.

Once everything is consolidated into the DVM, the impact is immediate. Launching new bundles becomes faster. Managing lifecycle events is simpler. Supporting customers gets easier. And the entire operation becomes more scalable and more predictable.

Migration isn’t just a technical task, it’s what unlocks the value of moving to one product, one integration, and one source of truth.