British Telecom: Not Just Another ISP
By Edward Cone | Posted 2008-03-12
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Led by its technology
organization, BT remade itself from a legacy telco into an innovative global
communications services company.
The latest New Wave out
of London has nothing to do with skinny neckties, synthesizers or bad
haircuts. New Wave is the term used by BT Group to categorize revenue
derived from its businesses, including networked IT, broadband and
mobile services—offerings the telecommunications giant needs to drive
growth as its legacy phone business ages.
The transformation of the venerable company once known as British
Telecom is a dramatic story: the remaking of a former state-owned
monopoly built on 19th century technology into a dynamic global
enterprise. It involves the overhaul of a sprawling and inefficient
tech organization and the strategic and cultural shift across an
enormous company, all enabled by the development of a global IP network
and services platform, and inspired and led in large part by a small
group of technology executives.
A key architect of the transformation has been Al-Noor Ramji, BT
Group CIO and chief executive of BT Design. (The company reorganized
itself last year into two operating divisions: BT Design, which
develops 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 the
firm,” says Ramji, who likens the significance of BT’s transition to
IBM’s move from hardware to software and services. Read the full article How IT Transformed BT.
