BT today announced an expansion of its digital sustainability tools to help customers monitor and optimise energy use across their full IT estate, from the network to servers running their apps and workloads in data centres and elsewhere.

The company is integrating data on servers’ energy use into its AI-powered sustainability tools. It means BT’s digital dashboards can now offer a single, end-to-end picture of how much energy customers’ IT infrastructure is using and present actionable insights on what to do to optimise devices, apps and workloads to help meet their net zero goals. BT then offers to help deliver this as part of its sustainable network design and refresh service. 

For example, the dashboard can look at network traffic over a 24-hour period and processor telemetry to identify opportunities for server devices to be placed into deep sleep depending on the way the workloads and apps are run.

Globally, data centres and associated networks that underpin digitalisation account for 0.9 per cent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EU has already introduced new policies and regulations for reducing energy use and decarbonising data centres. Organisations will be required to demonstrate their data centres meet the EU’s Assessment Framework for Data Centres as part of the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will impact up to 50,000 companies.

BT continues to evolve its digital sustainability tools to help organisations meet these challenges. The tools already help customers monitor and benchmark energy consumption of their network devices in internet of things (IoT) operational environments such as factories and ports; local area networks (LANs) that provide connectivity within offices; and wide area networks (WANs) that link sites globally.

They are the latest step in the delivery of a BT Group Manifesto pledge to help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

Sarwar Khan, head of digital sustainability, Business, BT Group, said: “More and more customers are setting science-based net zero targets and face increasing regulatory pressures to improve efficiency in their data centres. By integrating data from leading IT vendor partners such as Cisco and INTEL, we’re giving customers end-to-end visibility of energy use across their full IT estate as well as the insight and support needed to optimise devices and workloads.”

ENDS

About BT’s digital sustainability tools

BT’s Carbon Network Dashboard gives a real-time view of power consumption across the network and datacentres. It uses AI and machine learning to detect and predict anomalies based on historic usage. This includes which network devices are consuming the most power. Customers can also forecast total energy use based on their network inventory and historic utilisation.

To help understand how electricity consumption translates into carbon emissions, the Dashboard includes data from regional power grids showing their carbon intensity.

The Digital Carbon Calculator helps customers estimate their network and data centre’s carbon footprint. It scans the customer’s network and data centre inventory to estimate their carbon footprint and can track how this responds to changes and upgrades over time. It includes lifecycle management, highlighting devices at the end of service to prioritise for replacement. Customers can also choose to use the calculator by uploading an inventory of their IT infrastructure equipment for analysis.

London, 8^th June 2023 – Mobile industry insights, forecast and research specialist GSMA Intelligence has today launched a new report revealing that the UK is falling behind other global players in the race for drone innovation. The report, commissioned by BT Group, outlines how the UK must learn from international peers and lays out recommendations which could help guarantee the UK is a leader in the drone economy if acted on within the next year.  

The research, supported by BT Group, found that many of the UK’s international partners, including Japan, Switzerland, France, Germany and Italy have seen their drone ecosystems develop faster due to established regulatory systems and infrastructure. The UK currently sits at the middle ‘drone readiness’ index, with Switzerland taking the leading position and the US the bottom of the table reflecting slower progress in drone regulatory rules.  

With drones potentially contributing £45 billion to the UK economy and supporting 650,000 jobs by 2030, following the report’s recommendations has transformative potential for both the public and private sector.  

A separate poll for BT Group* found that 75% of consumers believe that it is essential for drones to be used for public service delivery, and two thirds agreeing that drones could have a positive impact on their lives. In this context, the UK now has a window of as little as 12 months to facilitate greater investment and technological development, or risk falling behind.  

To increase drone readiness in the UK and win the race to the top, the report outlines four key recommendations for the UK government, the UK aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and other relevant agencies: 

• Facilitating permissions for safe, remotely piloted drone flights at scale: Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone capability underpins a successful drone industry and its applications. Although the UK has a BVLOS policy, it was found to be confusing and unclear among the raft of companies and start-ups testing or seeking deployment of their services at scale. The implementation guidelines need to be simplified and modernised. And a supporting regulatory framework that includes Unmanned Aircraft Traffic System Management (UTM), safety standards and training – must be a priority.  
• Enforce pro-innovation regulations and a pro-growth regulatory culture: The (CAA) must formulate workable regulations that promote investment in a timely manner, while ensuring safe operations and delivering public confidence in the industry.  
• Extend the Future Flight Challenge: The UK has many innovative companies in the drone sector that need a say in regulatory development. The flagship Future Flight Challenge, which the government has funded, has been a clear help and stimulus to private sector innovation and so this, or a related scheme, should be extended.  
• Act now: The UK has a window that is as narrow as 12 months to set the regulations and guidance that will help the sector thrive. The study found that many advanced economies expect drone regulations to be in place by 2024–2025, a date that the UK must also meet to remain competitive in developing home-grown technology for domestic use and in export markets.  

BT Group’s research also reveals that there is strong consumer demand for drone capabilities from a wide range of industries such as utilities, public services, manufacturing, last-mile logistics and distribution, conservation and land/forestry management, film and TV sectors.  

BT Group’s startup incubation hub, Etc., has already made significant steps in unlocking the potential of drones. Earlier this year, Etc. announced a landmark partnership with UTM specialist Altitude Angel, a partnership that will help enable Etc. to become a one-stop shop for UK drone enablement capabilities. Actioning the report’s recommendations could play a key role in bringing to market further opportunities that drone technology has to offer the public and private sector - from supporting the police to rapid transport of blood samples and delivery of items cheaper and faster than ever before.  

 Dave Pankhurst, Director of Drones, Etc. at BT Group said, “Across the globe, the drone industry is being rapidly unlocked. Tapping into this can transform the world of business, the delivery of public services, and the prospects for the UK economy.  

“BT Group is leading from the front. Our mobile network, as the largest and most reliable in the UK, could be critical. From improving flight control; assisting with authentication and authorisation; facilitating data transmission; and enabling cellular communication, 4G and 5G technology can be the backbone of the industry.  

“At Etc., we have reached some significant landmarks already, but with these new recommendations, we hope to rally the support of the government and industry regulators for the UK drone industry to reach its full potential.”  

Tim Hatt, Head of Consulting, GSMA Intelligence, adds “There is no question drones will be a key part of successful digital economies. The technology side of development is happening at pace across the board. The issue now is having regulatory systems that enable commercial expansion at scale. The challenge for the UK is that, despite huge progress in drone development, regulation has not kept pace and the country therefore scores only 62 out of 100 on overall market readiness, placing it behind European peers and others such as Japan.  

 “This need not be the case. Beyond the hive of activity happening in the drone sector, UK mobile network infrastructure and service development are advancing; 4G and 5G mobile coverage now reach 99% and 63% of the population respectively. Taking action on these recommendations would go a long way to helping the government’s ambitions to make the UK a technological leader in the 5G era, providing a boost to GDP, jobs and international competitiveness”.  

The full report is available to download. 

 ENDS 

*The consumer research was conducted using Yonder’s online omnibus among a nationally representative sample of 2,092 UK adults between 29 and 30 March 2023. 

 Notes to Editors  

 As the start-up incubation team within BT Group’s Digital unit, Etc. is boosting the businesses of the future and driving solutions in existing and emerging categories including drones, healthtech, fintech and beyond.  

About GSMA Intelligence 

GSMA Intelligence is the definitive source of global mobile operator data, analysis and forecasts, and publisher of authoritative industry reports and research. Our data covers every operator group, network and MVNO in every country worldwide – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It is the most accurate and complete set of industry metrics available, comprising tens of millions of individual data points, updated daily.  

 GSMA Intelligence is relied on by leading operators, vendors, regulators, financial institutions and third-party industry players, to support strategic decision-making and long-term investment planning. The data is used as an industry reference point and is frequently cited by the media and by the industry itself.  

Our team of analysts and experts produce regular thought-leading research reports across a range of industry topics.  

 www.gsmaintelligence.com   

info@gsmaintelligence.com  

Drone Readiness Index Methodology  

To follow an evidence-based approach, GSMA Intelligence constructed an index that is split into two broad parts: one on regulatory status and the other on a range of market indicators that collectively assess economic strength, telecoms sector readiness, and enterprise demand (i.e. from companies and organisations most likely to use drones as part of their operations).  

Each metric has been assigned a weighting factor, which corresponds to the relative level of importance a metric has on the overall index score; the higher the weight, the higher the importance.  

Weightings have been determined through a combination of research, data analysis and industry conversations about which indicators have the largest bearing on the drone market.                                                           

The deal significantly simplifies and restructures Digital’s existing supplier relationships to deliver an annualised £65 million saving by the end of FY25, contributing to BT Group's ambition to deliver £3bn in gross annualised savings across the same timeframe. This saving is expected to grow to £145 million a year by 2027.  A primary goal of the programme is to boost Digital’s capacity and focus to build its new strategic technology architecture faster, supporting the Group’s growth. It will also de-risk and accelerate the Group’s transition from legacy systems, an outcome structured into the deal.

As part of this deal, around 400 BT Group colleagues worldwide will have the opportunity to join TCS. TCS has an excellent track record of transitioning colleagues with these skills into transformative roles, and they will shape the team that will deliver the acceleration of our legacy decommissioning. In addition, colleagues moving to TCS will gain the opportunity to build long-term sustainable careers in an exciting technology business.            

Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT Group said: “This is yet another transformative move to greatly simplify the BT Group legacy estate. It removes complexity and intensifies our strategic focus on delivering the leading-edge tech to meet our customers’ needs and drive growth.”

TCS was selected because it demonstrated it can bring the skills, scale, problem understanding and innovative approach needed to help accelerate BT Group on its journey to the future.

Debashis Ghosh, President, Business Transformation Group, TCS, said: "We are delighted to be selected by BT Group as their strategic partner to manage and upkeep their legacy application estate and to give BT the capacity for the accelerated build of its new strategic stack. This is a truly innovative and ground-breaking deal that presents a replicable model for other large enterprises seeking to pivot into the new, while mitigating operational risks.”

Mehta continued, “This is an exciting outcome for our colleagues. Those who transition will be given incredible opportunities working with a high growth partner on important transformations. Those who remain, will have more clarity and focus to build our digital future.”

Ghosh added: "We warmly welcome transitioning BT Group employees into the TCS family. We are confident they will benefit from the immense learning and growth opportunities we offer, and pursue long, fulfilling careers at TCS."

In addition to the specifics of the deal, BT Group and TCS have agreed to work together to develop joint go to market propositions in the coming months.

- Ends -

About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 50 years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of business, technology and engineering services and solutions. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile™ delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development.

A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has over 616,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 55 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $25.7 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index.

For more information, visit www.tcs.com 

18 October 2022: BT Group’s Digital Unit today announces it is working with Ab Initio, an enterprise data platform provider, to provide strategic, smart automated data management at scale for the group. Ab Initio will support the real-time automation of rules, policies, frameworks and interconnects between its core data, its applications and the processes and people who rely on the data. This will boost productivity, drive efficiency, improve the accuracy of data and the value of the insight to BT Group and its customers, whilst tightening data governance, ensuring the safe, secure, responsible use of data on demand.

All of this work is vital to delivering impact from the Group’s 29 petabyte data estate efficiently, forecast to be worth an aggregate £500m in internal value to the Group over the next five years*. This value will come from analysis of internal and external datasets, to deliver improved customer and colleague outcomes, as well as operational efficiency and sales insights.

“Ab Initio will help us securely and effectively get our critical data into our data platform at pace, whilst also allowing us to understand the origins, quality and context of our data, making it dramatically more useful. Coupled with automated governance, the new ‘data products’ we deliver will boost the quality of our insights and our productivity, driving real value to the Group without compromising our data standards,” comments Adrian Joseph, Managing Director, Data & AI in BT Group’s Digital unit.

Ab Initio will support the orchestration of data between BT Group’s applications across its estate and its data platform, built on Google Cloud. It will also provide dynamic understanding of different data types, providing the crucial metadata that allows data scientists and artificial intelligence software to make use of them. This in turn will allow for the creation of re-usable data products, for example containing location or blackspot data, customer interactions insights, etc., which can be re-used in a range of contexts. This supports BT Group’s “Inner Source” ambitions, to make data (as well as code, design and documentation) as re-usable as possible, minimising duplication of efforts and boosting productivity.

With this deal BT Group can extend and augment Ab Initio’s existing capacity, which has driven value across the business in the past.  Ab Initio has worked on multiple programmes across BT Group, including the complex event processing of 10+ billion events across our networks. It supports BT Group’s Mobile Network Data Analytics platform and Active Intelligence service, helping the Group derive insights from the data generated from tens of millions of mobile devices in a secure, privacy friendly and efficient manner. Ab Initio has also processed data for the EE Data Warehouse for over a decade, delivering data for business intelligence and analytical use-cases, helping it better understand its customers, their network experiences, and provide personalised offers that are tailored to fit their needs.

“BT Group’s approach – using Ab-initio to support orchestration, automation, metadata intelligence, governance and controls around its core data platform – will get it up to 88.2 miles per hour in no time at all. It’s a short cut to the future of the AI-led enterprise, unlocking agility without compromise, against a robust ethical framework,” comments Alan Parker, who heads Ab Initio’s international operations.

* See Digital Business briefing, March 2022

-ENDS-

About Ab Initio

Ab Initio Software is a privately-held global software company headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, US, with regional offices in London, Paris, Munich, Rome, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Warsaw, Tokyo, Sydney, Jakarta, and Singapore. Ab Initio was founded in 1995 and for more than 25 years, Ab Initio has worked with the largest and most sophisticated organizations in financial services, telecom, healthcare, retail, high-tech, transportation, manufacturing and government, among others, to assure their business success. Ab Initio products are designed, from the beginning, to provide a single, cohesive technology platform for scalable, high performance across the full spectrum of commercial data processing activities — from real-time operational systems to batch processing analytic systems, from data warehouses to transactional systems, from data governance to data fabric. 

Ab initio is Latin, and it means “From First Principles” or “From The Beginning.” Doing everything “From First Principles” is one of our core values: we always try to think through what we do from the ground up before we do it. This applies to the design and implementation of our products, to the way we support our customers, to the way we do our marketing, and to the way we run our business. Ab Initio's solutions are designed “From First Principles” to take into account all the basic and important requirements for developing and operating large and complex data processing systems. 

For more information, visit About | Ab Initio 

11th May 2022: BT Digital today announces plans to consolidate BT’s legacy service management platforms into a single system, ServiceNow, as part of a large group-wide transformation programme. ServiceNow will roll out across all of BT Group as rapidly as possible, replacing 56 legacy applications, 76 different ways of implementing service processes, and forecast savings of over £25 million by 2027.

“We are focused on building great products and platforms, and ensuring that we provide brilliant service on them,” comments Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at BT. “Our AI and cloud first approach is a core part of how we unlock this at pace and at scale, so we’re delighted Bill and the team at ServiceNow share our vision for the AI Ops model as the way to transform the way we deliver across BT.”

Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, said: “Under Harmeen’s leadership, BT’s Digital Unit is investing with urgency in technologies that deliver business impact. The era of digital business is in full flight at BT. BT and Harmeen understand differentiated innovation must be built. Together, we are expanding the use of this powerful platform so BT can transform the world’s great challenges into the biggest opportunities.”

The partnership with ServiceNow has already begun to bear fruit, showing early benefits in the management of BT’s own internal IT, as well as in its customer facing units in Enterprise and Global. ServiceNow are working closely with BT on the deployment, supporting BT’s own culture change programme with DevOps and AI perspectives from the ServiceNow team reinforcing and embedding BT’s Digital Way culture change process.

Early read-outs are showing a 50% reduction in efforts required to deliver service requests, and a 20X boost in the speed of deploying changes into customer services. The service management platform is integrated into BT’s data repository, built with Google Cloud, to integrate real-time AI insight into the service management process. It is being rolled out to teams across BT Group, including service management experts in Digital, Networks and BT’s Customer Facing Units.

BT’s Mehta continues: “ServiceNow is not only helping BT improve our efficiency, it is freeing investment and resource for more strategic and innovation focussed programs, supporting our long term strategy to invest in growth.”

04 May 2022: BT’s Digital unit today 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.

Sunnyvale, Calif., and London, UK [10 March 2022]: - Today, Google Cloud and BT announced a strategic, five-year partnership to accelerate BT’s company-wide digital transformation. The collaboration will involve BT using a suite of Google Cloud products and services—including cloud infrastructure, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, security, and API management—to deliver superior customer experiences, reduce costs and risk, and build new revenue streams.

BT is undertaking a massive digital transformation through its BT Digital unit, and this initiative includes creating a group-wide data and AI fabric as part of its cloud-first and AI-first strategy. Under the partnership, the two companies will help BT unlock hundreds of new business use-cases to strengthen its ambitions around digital offerings and creating hyper-personalised customer engagement.

BT’s data transformation is centred around driving business outcomes and using AI and deep ML across the organisation to allow businesses and customers to make more data-led decisions, as well as creating deeper personalisation for customer offerings and new go-to-market propositions. This will also enable BT to have real-time network analytics to allow for a more enhanced customer service through predictive fault management and assurance.

In addition, Google’s SRE team will partner with BT to foster a continuous delivery and “zero ops” autonomous operations culture to accelerate product development and continuous innovation as part of the new culture of working that BT calls “The Digital Way.”

“Our partnership with Google is one of a series of strategic moves that BT Digital is taking to help accelerate BT’s growth and digital transformation. This is a partnership that is deeper than just at the technology level. It will help Digital as a whole supercharge BT and drive its return to growth,” said Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT.

“We’re proud to collaborate with one of the world's leading providers of communications services and play an integral part in its digital transformation journey,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO at Google Cloud. “By deploying our full cloud capabilities, and support from our SRE organisation, our goal in this partnership is to set up BT with the tools it needs for future growth and innovation.” 

Google and BT have already started working together on adopting Google technology, and plan to complete the core migration of data by 2023.

About Google Cloud

Google Cloud accelerates every organisation’s ability to digitally transform its business. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology – all on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.