DT has migrated 60% of its IT apps to the cloud, ‘empowers’ fibre net

The initiative was begun in 2020 with AWS and CIO Peter Leukert stresses what public cloudification can achieve and the power of the platform-based model

Peter Leukert, CIO at Deutsche Telekom, says Deutsche Telekom’s internal IT unit, has achieved “a momentous milestone,” migrating more than 60% of DT’s IT applications to the cloud.

Leukert’s blog states, “This achievement [in June] has facilitated rapid innovation, enabling us to launch products within days, offer seamless and comprehensive digital customer experiences, all while improving sustainability.”

The migration was initiated with the assistance of AWS back in 2020 and most of the migrated core IT applications are supported by AWS. The CIO writes, “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.”

Applied to broadband deployment

He stresses the impact on one of Deutsche Telekom’s key projects – Gigabit, which is extending the company’s fibre network across Germany.

He says the application known as the Gigabit Business Framework has automated the coordination of construction companies and field technicians to improve process efficiency. It also supports pre-sales activities, customer-driven infrastructure roll-out, and real-time fulfilment.

Gigabit’s production environment was shifted from an on-premise systems to AWS In February by a team of 25 experts. The transition was completed in less than nine hours and improved deployment times by 75%. Of particular note was the 30% improvement in the responsiveness of the user interface (UI) and application programming interfaces (APIs).

Leveraging GitOps and ArgoCD

Leukert cites Christian Rehm, an engineer in the Gigabit project, saying, “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 [an operational framework that takes DevOps best practices used for application development such as version control, collaboration, compliance, and CI/CD, and applies them to infrastructure automation] and ArgoCD [a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes] has optimized our processes, ensuring rapid time-to-market and effortless scalability.”

Right down to the consumer

Leukert adds that in parallel, DT has “seamlessly integrated cloud-native applications into our ecosystem, exemplified by OneShop, Deutsche Telekom’s…e-commerce platform.”

This is designed to unite all the international subsidiaries and affiliates and OneApp, a self-care mobile app for customers using IOS and Android, powered by AWS. These applications serve, on average, more than 4.4 million customers every month in Germany.

A marketing campaign built around the concept of Dynamic DataSnack offered customers free additional data as a thank you for their loyalty and had 1.1 million takers within six days of launch. Again, AWS’ services managed the scale of the digital interactions driven by this campaign while emphasising the central role of the platform.

Clearly DT is keen to stress its confidence in the use of public cloud and its on-going transition to being a platform-based service provider. Leukert also quoted Mamta Bharti, platform owner, saying, “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 endeavours ensure the sustained scalability, adaptability, and readiness for ongoing innovation of its integrated platform.”

Fabio Cerone, Managing Director, EMEA Telecom Industry Business Unit at AWS put in his appreciation too: “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.

“We want to express our highest appreciation to Deutsche Telekom for their change agent attitude and their consistent collaboration and trust since we started this journey together more than three years ago.”