British Telecom: Not Just Another ISP

The latest New Wave outof London has nothing to do with skinny neckties, synthesizers or badhaircuts. New Wave is the term used by BT Group to categorize revenuederived from its businesses, including networked IT, broadband andmobile services?offerings the telecommunications giant needs to drivegrowth as its legacy phone business ages.

The transformation of the venerable company once known as BritishTelecom is a dramatic story: the remaking of a former state-ownedmonopoly built on 19th century technology into a dynamic globalenterprise. It involves the overhaul of a sprawling and inefficienttech organization and the strategic and cultural shift across anenormous company, all enabled by the development of a global IP networkand services platform, and inspired and led in large part by a smallgroup of technology executives.

A key architect of the transformation has been Al-Noor Ramji, BTGroup CIO and chief executive of BT Design. (The company reorganizeditself last year into two operating divisions: BT Design, whichdevelops services, and BT Operate, which delivers them.) ?We said,let?s do it first in IT, that?s closest to what we want to do with thefirm,? says Ramji, who likens the significance of BT?s transition toIBM?s move from hardware to software and services.

Read the full article How IT Transformed BT.