AWS for Industries

Cloud Technology Empowers Deutsche Telekom’s Fiber Optic Network – 60 percent of Core IT Applications of Deutsche Telekom IT Now Running on Cloud

DeutscheTelekomIT, the in-house IT company of Deutsche Telekom, has achieved a momentous milestone by migrating over 60 percent of its core IT applications to the cloud. This achievement has facilitated rapid innovation, enabling Deutsche Telekom to launch products within days, offer seamless and comprehensive digital customer experiences, all while lowering its environmental footprint.

Journey to the Cloud

The journey to migrate 60 percent of Deutsche Telekom IT’s applications to the cloud was initiated with assistance of one of Deutsche Telekom’s key cloud service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2020. As of June 2023, this milestone has been achieved, with the majority of migrated core IT applications now supported by AWS. Cloudification has not only optimized workflows, reducing time-to-market from months to days, but also ensured an enhanced customer experience at critical touchpoints within strategic projects.

Gigabit: Elevating Fiber Optic Connectivity with Cloud Technology

A prime example of migrating core applications to the cloud can be seen in one of Deutsche Telekom’s key projects – Gigabit. This project is aimed at extending the company’s fiber optic network across Germany.

The role of Deutsche Telekom’s IT engineers has been revolutionary in reshaping the construction of fiber optic infrastructure across the entire telecommunications industry. Deutsche Telekom’s endeavors are directed towards crafting a completely novel customer experience both prior to and during the rollout of fiber optic connections, facilitating the swift and scalable installation of fibre to the home (FTTH). Through the application known as the Gigabit Business Framework, Deutsche Telekom not only streamlined the coordination of construction companies and field technicians through automation, enhancing process efficiency, but also enable pre-sales activities, customer-driven infrastructure rollout, and real-time fulfillment.

In February 2023, the migration of Gigabit’s production environment from on-premise systems to AWS was a notable success. This migration, carried out by a team of 25 experts, saw the technical transition completed in less than 9 hours. As a result, deployment times improved by a significant 75 percent, and there was a noteworthy 30 percent enhancement in the responsiveness of the user interface (UI) and application programming interfaces (APIs).

As Christian Rehm, Solution Train Engineer from Deutsche Telekom in the Gigabit project, higlights, “Cloud technology enables us to coordinate hundreds of microservices across a range of environments for the Gigabit project. This achievement is made attainable through advanced scaling technology. The implementation of GitOps and ArgoCD has optimized our processes, ensuring rapid time-to-market and effortless scalability.”

Born in the Cloud: OneShop and OneApp

In parallel, Deutsche Telekom seamlessly integrated cloud-native applications into its ecosystem, exemplified by OneShop, Deutsche Telekom’s distinct e-commerce platform uniting all the international subsidiaries and affiliates and OneApp, a self-care mobile app available on both IOS and Android, catering to the service needs of existing customers and powered by AWS. These applications have achieved remarkable outreach, serving a user base of over 7 million customers in Germany.

The recent marketing campaign „Dynamic DataSnack” featured offering complimentary additional data to Deutsche Telekom’s customers as a gesture of appreciation for their longstanding loyalty, which garnered 1.1 million bookings within a mere six days. It stands as another significant achievement in the Deutsche Telekom’s digital transformation journey. AWS’s advanced services played a pivotal role in effectively managing the vast-scale digital interactions of this campaign, emphasizing the central role of the platform in our accomplishments.

“By harnessing the diverse range of AWS services, Deutsche Telekom IT is not only enhancing its digital offerings but also bolstering its commitment to robust platform engineering. These endeavors ensure the sustained scalability, adaptability, and readiness for ongoing innovation of its integrated platform”, emphasizes Mamta Bharti, Platform Owner at Deutsche Telekom.

Reducing the Carbon Emissions Through Cloud Transition

Beyond the immediate benefits, Deutsche Telekom’s cloud transformation journey has contributed to sustainability. Analysis by 451 Research shows that AWS’s infrastructure is 3.6 times more energy efficient than the median of U.S. enterprise data centers surveyed and finds AWS infrastructure to be five times more energy efficient than the average European enterprise data center. Building on AWS, reduces the workload carbon footprints by nearly 80% and up to 96% once AWS is powered with 100% renewable energy

Cultivating Trust-Based Collaboration: Deutsche Telekom working with AWS

At the core of the joint vision between Deutsche Telekom and AWS is a firm dedication to trust-based and effective collaboration. The milestone achieved by Deutsche Telekom is remarkable, and demonstrates how clearly identified aggressive goals, deployed top down across the organization, and a relentless attitude to experiment, learn and transform the organization culture are the key success factors for an impactful digital transformation through cloud.

TAGS:
Fabio Cerone

Fabio Cerone

Fabio is currently Managing Director at AWS, where he founded the Telco Business Unit for the EMEA region back in 2019. He joined AWS after an extensive sales experience to scale very large businesses (over $1B USD), developing organization and operational capabilities to deliver software solutions and technology-enabled services businesses across the telecom industry. He has worked at large telecom companies such as Ericsson and Telecom Italia. In Ericsson, he has been the global head of the telco cloud business line with the responsibility to drive service providers transformation to cloud adoption. Fabio is a dynamic executive who achieved success by driving sales growth and business transformation in both the global dimension (Global Executive roles in Corporate) and in the local dimension as customer sales executive. With 24 years of tech sector experience, his career developed from a variety of customer-facing roles in sales, delivery, business development into senior executive responsibilities, including general manager role driving companywide transformation Programs aimed at boosting sales in new areas. His expertise focuses on the telecom Industry, telecom systems and architectures, communication software, Cloud infrastructure and services, management software and platforms, mobility including evolution to 5G, systems integration business. Fabio’s leadership and management experience provided a key contribution in developing high performing organizations, establishing a culture of collaboration, ownership, accountability and customer focus.

Peter Leukert

Peter Leukert

Dr. Peter Leukert earned his Ph.D. in Financial Mathematics from Humboldt University in Berlin and graduated in Mathematics and Physics from Bielefeld University. He began his career in 1994 at McKinsey & Company and became founding member of the Business Technology Office. He left McKinsey in 2007 to become CIO of Commerzbank, the second-largest bank in Germany. There he led the integration of Dresdner Bank – one of the largest European IT integration projects ever. Consequently, he was honored as "CIO of the Year 2011" by "CIO Magazine" and "Computerwoche". From 2012 to 2013, Peter was CIO for NYSE Euronext before moving to financial software specialist FIS in May 2013 as Head of Strategy. 2016 he co-founded Motive Partners, an innovative private equity firm in FinTech. In January 2017, Peter became CIO of the Deutsche Telekom Group. Under his leadership IT accelerated the time-to-market to 3,5 months from 18 months while strongly increasing quality.