How does digital transformation work? American communications giant AT&T teaches you a few tricks!

The resistance brought by the legacy system to telecom operators is as great as the resistance brought to any other industry. This is the case with AT&T Communications, which is undergoing a comprehensive transformation of technical infrastructure and processes in order to better support 5G networks and other emerging technologies.

The resistance brought by the legacy system to telecom operators is as great as the resistance brought to any other industry. This is the case with AT&T Communications, which is undergoing a comprehensive transformation of technical infrastructure and processes in order to better support 5G networks and other emerging technologies.

 

Since joining AT&T from WarnerMedia in 2020, CTO Jeremy Legg has established a new department to operate IT, software, security and data architecture. The technical team began to upgrade the infrastructure and processes to improve the employee experience, including integrating data centers, migrating internal applications and systems to cloud providers, simplifying data functions to make the business more agile, and phasing out legacy applications while integrating before and after integration End services and databases.

For example, when Legg first joined, AT&T had more than 7,000 applications-this is the result of several mergers and acquisitions in the past few decades, but as Legg moved more computing workloads to the public cloud, this number began Keep decreasing.

 

Legg said: "The rise of the public cloud provides an opportunity to eliminate some applications and switch to a new target architecture."

 

Here are a few secrets of successful digital transformation shared by Legg.

01 Reduce the difference between IT expectations and business expectations

Legg worked with the business department to develop a multi-year roadmap. He knew that the IT team and the business team looked at the same issues from different perspectives. IT leaders focus on phased goals, including which technologies the company will adopt or eliminate, and when they will adopt or eliminate them, while business leaders want to know the ROI (return on investment) target and "when the cost curve will move toward a technology that is conducive to the acquired technology." The direction is curved". Legg will ensure that IT departments and business departments are aligned on the roadmap as its mission.

AT&T Communications CTO Jeremy Legg

 

Legg said: "A very clear guideline can be established to break down the work into several parts that each leader can perform." He added that it is important to measure and track progress in this process, including KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). ).

 

02 Strive for simplicity

Business people seldom care about technology, as long as the bottom technology can bring the expected effect, so don't let the business people worry about the bottom technology.

 

Legg said: "The goal is to make technology extremely simple, minimize expenditures, and increase revenue. You can't expect business people to interpret the technical architecture. You have to make the technical architecture extremely simple, so that business people can focus on important tasks."

 

03 Scale changes everything

In an environment where 200,000 employees serve 100 million customers, the implementation of changes that affect all employees requires careful coordination and communication and world-class change management. Legg said: "When the scale is increased, the way of communication, frequency, and how to clearly convey the information level by level are completely different. You can't gather 200,000 people together."

 

From a technical point of view, Legg's team integrated hundreds of databases and migrated 100 PB of data to the cloud. It is important to stress test these systems to ensure that they can support real-time usage scenarios, rather than only processing static data. "You have to look at this from an architectural perspective, from a completely different perspective."

04 Don't be perfunctory in retraining

A comprehensive cloud migration means that AT&T must retrain its workforce. The Legg team spent several months changing employees who are accustomed to accessing Microsoft Outlook email from the desktop to use Microsoft Office 365, including teaching them to access email from their smartphones.

 

But Legg said that if he can start from scratch, he will strengthen training for employees in the target technology and architecture before the transformation. Legg said: "If employees have an understanding of the vision and technical goals, it will be much easier to get them involved."

 

05 Try to automate as much as possible

Retraining and recruiting talent alone cannot solve the problems of the technical team, which is why Legg said he strongly supports automation, including the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to complete tasks more efficiently.

 

Legg said: "Whether it's developing the right applications, solving problems, or performing different types of analysis, automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are all essential. The skilled job market is in short supply and high salaries-you can't hire fast enough. To enough people, hiring is not a cost-effective way. "Although the adoption of automation may lead to a certain degree of reduction in the work of employees, Legg said that good organizations will retrain those employees to make them more valuable. High jobs, such as customer service.

 

06 Link your efforts to actual business results

For a long time, business leaders have struggled to interpret data scattered across multiple systems. The Legg team streamlined the database and aggregated the data stored in these silos to form a single customer view, thereby supporting more accurate sales prospects. Business employees can use tools such as Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards that reflect these insights.

 

According to Gartner's new IT spending research, currently, boards of directors and CEOs are very willing to invest in technology that is clearly linked to business results.

 

Legg said: "Now business and technical departments need closer cooperation than ever before. Without the support of one party, the other party can't succeed."