BT Taps AWS to Drive Digital Transformation

BT’s Digital unit has announced an agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of its drive to transform legacy infrastructure and internal applications to a new cloud-first architecture.

The effort will help accelerate BT’s plans to build and innovate faster on a new suite of digital products and services and reduce costs in IT maintenance, delivering more value for its Consumer, Enterprise, Global and Openreach customers.

This agreement is one element of BT's broader modernisation programme that aims to deliver £2 billion in gross annualised savings by end FY24, as BT retires legacy applications, associated infrastructure, and data centres. The collaboration with AWS is a cornerstone of BT Digital’s plans to deliver an industry-leading, cloud-first architecture for BT Group. It represents a dramatic simplification from the company’s current IT estate, and is designed to be cloud-native, microservices-based, and fully modular. This approach will boost BT’s ability to move rapidly in response to and anticipation of customer needs, permitting for security, privacy and compliance by design.

“We have a big opportunity when it comes to modernising our infrastructure, and our collaboration with AWS is a key one for us as we deliver the transformation needed to accelerate BT,” comments Thomas Dücke, Chief Operating Officer, BT Digital.

Adolfo Hernandez, Vice President and General Manager, Telecom Global Industry Business Unit, AWS, says: “BT’s move to cloud-first applications can help reduce IT maintenance costs, streamline operations and help it better adapt to evolving customer needs. Plus, the AWS pay-as-you-go model offers flexibility so BT only pays for the IT needed.”

Over the next five years, BT intends to continue to make significant investments and use of AWS technology to accelerate its digital transformation with a particular focus on application workloads via containers and serverless technologies.

BT Group is the UK’s leading telecommunications and network provider and a leading provider of global communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries.

Its principal activities in the UK include the provision of fixed voice, mobile, broadband and TV (including Sport) and a range of products and services over converged fixed and mobile networks to consumer, business and public sector customers.