TalkTalk – Brochure 2019

P R O J E C T PA R T N E R S

A mature start-up

A mature

start-up

WRITTEN BY Kev i n D av i e s PRODUCED BY K i ro n C h avd a 2

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We travelled to Salford, Greater Manchester, to catch up with TalkTalk’s Managing Director of Technology, Change, and Security, Gary Steen regarding its commitment to thinking, and acting, differently in a highly competitive marketplace…

alkTalk is an established telecommunications company that fosters a youthful, pioneering spirit. “I like to think of TalkTalk as a mature start-up,” says Managing Director of Technology, Change and Security, Gary Steen. “We are mature in terms of being in the FTSE 250, with over four million customers relying on our services every day through our essential, critical national infrastructure.

But that said, I definitely think we start our day thinking as a start-up would.

What can we do differently? How do we beat the competition? How do we attract great talent? We’ve got to

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One team building the future together.

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CGI and TalkTalk are working together to transform TalkTalk’s IT capability by implementing a mature operational model across both systems and processes. Fifteen months into a five-year partnership, the One IT Operations programme is well underway, already delivering operational efficiency to underpin further growth for TalkTalk.

Like TalkTalk, CGI operates with

expensive data centre. This migra-

delivered in the first year. Extract-

the innovation, flexibility and

tion is underpinning the business’s

ing maximum value from the joint

energy of a start-up, combining

ability to respond in an agile way

investment in tools is ensuring Talk-

industry and technical experience

to market pressures and regula-

Talk delivers maximum value for its

with local knowledge. The collab-

tory changes through confidence

customers. Automation is enabling

oration and ethos of operating

in the IT estate. CGI, motivated

a responsive, proactive approach

as one team is further enabled

by the knowledge that consum-

to resolving issues, directly reduc-

by CGI’s global capability and its

ers and businesses depend on

ing costs, increasing accuracy and

opening of an office in the same

TalkTalk’s products and service,

improving customer service. This

building as TalkTalk’s headquar-

recognises that what it does has a

secures revenue by retaining ex-

ters at Soapworks, Salford Quays

big part to play in delivering Talk-

isting customers and fulfilling more

in Manchester, allowing the two

Talk’s commitments. As TalkTalk’s

new customer orders.

teams to learn, adapt and suc-

estate is transformed, rationalised

ceed together.

and simplified, security is baked

tions enables TalkTalk to deliver a

into the design, rooting out tech-

high-quality service to its custom-

parency and honesty, a plan was

nical vulnerabilities and protecting

ers. As CGI creates a strong op-

agreed to jointly power through

TalkTalk’s services from disruption.

erating base that is ready to meet

Operating from a base of trans-

the inevitable bumps in the road

Fundamentally, One IT Opera-

the demands of TalkTalk’s future

This transformation is pro-

and deliver the One IT Operations

ducing savings that TalkTalk will

business, the identification of

transition programme on time and

reinvest in delivering market-lead-

opportunities to function more ef-

to budget. Consolidating services

ing products and services. It is

ficiently is proving addictive. When

from multiple incumbent suppliers

simplifying the infrastructure and

problems arise, they are fixed

into a single end-to-end service

shrinking support, maintenance,

faster than ever before, boosting

is transforming TalkTalk’s opera-

licence and third-party managed

TalkTalk’s business effectiveness

tional model and providing a robust

service costs leading to the re-

through increased system uptime.

support capability for its services; a

duction of electricity and rent bills.

foundation to build on for the future.

This shift delivers an equilibrium

TalkTalk with a determination to

across IT management, core busi-

work as one, to deliver operational

ness and customer needs.

and business transformation. The

At the same time, One IT Operations is migrating services to private cloud capabilities that are

At the core of CGI’s delivery is

CGI began the partnership with

One IT Operations’ engagement

future-fit and bring cost savings;

continuous service improvement,

has proved that, by working to-

like the planned closure of an

with over 400 improvements

gether, we succeed.

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EXECUTIVE INSIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH TA L K TA L K ’ S G A RY ST E E N

come at this in a different way if we are going to succeed in the marketplace. We are mature, but we think like a start-up.”

The telco market is growing both in terms of complexity and demand, which requires TalkTalk to outthink and outsmart its competition through products that offer great prices and value. “To deliver those products we need really smart talent,” Steen explains, from the company’s impressive Soapworks base in the burgeoning Salford Quays area of Greater 8

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Manchester. “So, we’ve been obsessing over how we make the switch to a great team.”

TalkTalk works with numerous partners on its day-to-day operations, but Steen is dedicated to refreshing its internal talent to complement the outsourcing. “This year, we brought in over 50 graduates to build some very smart teams in this building.

We’re training them up and getting them onboard. Being agile is really important to creating that capability and we’ll always use partners, but

I think there’s got to be a real balance between external and internal skills.”

With an ever-increasing complexity in the telco market, Steen and his team are working hard to make sure the company has sufficient IT skills within its team, bearing in mind the skills gap in tech right now. “It is a challenge and one of the reasons we’ve begun to grow our own talent is because we are using some next generation capabilities: new tools, platforms and packages,” he explains. “There is definitely a skills gap, so we are doing a mix. We are cross-training people who have been in other careers over to being technologists. We get some good w w w.ta lkta lk. co. u k

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Activating Data responsibly in association with our premier partner

IBM supports the data lifecycle – from collection to consumption DATA ARCHITECTS

DATA ENGINEERS

DATA STEWARDS

GOVERN THE DATA

DATA COLLECTION

DISCOVER

define business glossary, policies & rules connect & access data

ACTIVATE THE DATA

UNDERSTAND

CONSUME

PREPARE

DATA SCIENCE

Search & find relevant data

Prepare data for analysis

Build and train ML DL models

Profile data Assess Quality Curate & Catalog

Classify data

Data Monetization ACCELERATE WITH INDUSTRY CONTENT

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KNOWLEDGE WORKER

Responsible stewardship and

the technological leaps

tion stack with infrastructure

trust have been hallmarks of

they require.

we have 100% confidence in, but also now know our cus-

IBM’s culture, from our labs to the boardroom, for more than a

IBM’s data journey with Talk-

tomers can access their data

century. Data Responsibility is a

Talk is a great example of how

whenever they need to at any

perfect illustration of this culture.

enterprises are modernizing

point in the day”

At IBM, we’ve always followed

and maturing in terms of man-

Another key Programme under-

straightforward principles to act

agement, governance, under-

way that speaks to responsible

responsibly and earn trust. Today,

standing and use of data in a

stewardship of data is the Data

our principles include:-

responsible way; doing so with

Governance Programme.

the confidence that the data

“Data Governance is of para-

is accurate, secure and helping

mount importance to TalkTalk

improve customer experience.

and is at the heart of everything

TalkTalk has modernised its

we do”, says Sarah Corlett, TalkTalk’s

• The purpose of new technologies is to augment - not replace - human intelligence.

• Data and insights belong to

numerous legacy storage envi-

Data Governance Manager.

ronments, consolidating onto

“Keeping our data accurate,

• New technology, including AI

the latest IBM Spectrum soft-

compliant and secure is critical

(Artificial Intelligence), must

ware defined storage: “Using

to the success of our business

be transparent and explainable.

IBM for both our strategic storage

and builds customer trust. We

platforms - Spectrum Virtualise

are therefore building a data

Recent initiatives that demonstrate

(block) and Spectrum Scale (file)

governance function in Man-

IBM’s principles at work include:

with added data protection suite

chester and recruiting a team

Spectrum Protect – means we

of experienced Enterprise Data

have a scalable platform for all of

Specialists to manage data gov-

an open source software

TalkTalk’s future data and appli-

ernance across the entire estate.

toolkit to help developers

cation needs”, comments Daniel

We have also invested in the IBM

actively detect and reduce

Riley, Storage & Backup Manag-

Infosphere toolset, one of the

bias in datasets and AI.

er at TalkTalk. “Designing and

leading governance tools on the

building a multi-site ‘active-ac-

market, to enable TalkTalk to

Blockchain to capture call

tive’ platform with IBM and SCC

govern our data in one central

data in real time and save

has helped drive business goals

location. The tool will support

it in a format that’s trusted,

of a truly 24-hour system serving

growth and revenue initiatives

traceable and accessible

our customers’ needs first with

through the improvement, man-

to network providers and

a fully resilient infrastructure

agement and transformation

carriers worldwide, making

platform underpinning the

of our data to improve data

international phone calls feel

application layer. We can now

insight and fulfil the require-

seamless despite all

consolidate our legacy applica-

ments of our customers.”

their owner.

• Launching “AI Fairness 360”,

• Telefónica turned to IBM

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talent from that capability.”

TalkTalk’s graduate program has recruited 60-70 people this year already and that will only increase, according to Steen. “They’re really hungry to work on new projects and ideas, so we’re really obsessing about putting them into cohort. What we do around the development of the careers is key, as well as what we do for our people who cross-train. So, we break them into cohorts to make sure we’ve got the right talent approach to each of those segments.”

TalkTalk has grown massively as a result of some major acquisitions and that has amassed many varieties of staff, partners and legacy systems leading to a fine balancing act between internal and outsourced staff.

“We’ve grown as a business, really, really quickly,” Steen explains. “And we’ve probably got a little bit too wide, not only in terms of complexity and of our systems and capability, but also in terms of the number of partners we are using. In the last couple of years, we’ve been working on slimming that down and consolidating.”

In 2018, the company had five different partners and operator models for its IT operations prompting a massive 12

TA L K TA L K

Gary Steen Managing Director of Technology, Change, and Security TalkTalk Gary Steen has over 25 years’ experience working in the UK and internationally as an innovator in technology and business transformation leader featuring spells with Vodafone, BT, O2, Carphone Warehouse, Sprint, Aircell and Telstra.

Gary is currently building and leading a worldclass capability across the TalkTalk Technology group which spans: • 3,038 Network Points of Presence across the UK • Software and IT delivery across our 700 applications and 4,500 servers • A colleague experience across 8,000+ Staff and Partners.

• and the delivery of major transformations and programme change across the group During his career, Gary has worked on a wide array of projects delivering connectivity solutions in the consumer and B2B markets covering mobile, fixed line, data and air-to-ground broadband.

Gary is also a board member of Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise partnership ensuring regional development in skills and technology with the objective of making the area a £50 billion economy by 2040.

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How IT partnership got TalkTalk talking In a digital world that is evolving

For businesses to obtain true

nology to deliver world-class

rapidly and where data is growing

value in their IT investments,

solutions. SCC helps people

exponentially, businesses have to

th ey n e e d a n a m a l g a m of

to do business through plan-

be incredibly aware of the impor-

expertise from organisations

ning, supplying, integrating and

tance of their IT infrastructure.

w i t h c o m p l i m e nt a r y s k i l l s .

managing their IT. Its portfolio

By investing and keeping up-to-

By choosing to work with a

of solutions spans from sup-

date with the latest solutions

provider that prides itself on

ply through to fully managed

and innovations, businesses can

offering the best solutions

services, infrastructure opti-

remain competitive and relevant

through valued partnerships,

misation, unified communica-

in the markets that they serve.

a bespoke and truly beneficial

tions and datacentre services.

Through SCC and IBM’s partner-

solution can be gained.

Together with IBM – one of the

ship, TalkTalk has been able to realise those benefits.

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TA L K TA L K

SCC and IBM have worked

world’s largest IT companies,

together for more than 40 years.

they were able to consolidate

Together they bridge the gap be-

and refresh TalkTalk’s legacy

tween business need and tech-

server and storage estate.

w w w.scc.com • 0121 766 7000 TalkTalk

Transformational results

los, standardised components and

TalkTalk Group faced a number

SCC worked with TalkTalk, IT

a full leverage of the on-command

of challenges, primarily as a

partners, and vendors to select

management and provisioning tool.

result of growth through ac-

a refreshed server and storage

This, however, was just phase

quisition. IT infrastructure had

estate. This was based upon IBM

become costly, difficult to man-

Power and storage technology for

age and was not supporting the

the core “priority one” systems.

one of an ongoing engagement.

SCC is working with IBM, Public Cloud providers and other vendors

SCC successfully led the solution

to continuously refresh and mod-

design, delivery and implementation

ernise TalkTalk’s IT estate. This will

data centres required discovering,

of this mission-critical project. By

always include some workloads

identifying, consolidating and re-

consolidating and refreshing the

running on the cloud, some “on

freshing. An ageing storage estate

legacy server and storage estate,

premise” and some as a hybrid

that was originally sourced from

SCC and IBM helped TalkTalk to:

between the two; a typical modern

business as it should.

More than 2,500 hosts across 11

approximately 13 different stor-

• Reduce costs

age vendors with varying levels of

• Improve system performance

support required modernising and

• Increase storage capacity

at the core of this approach and

simplifying as a matter of urgency.

• Enhance business agility by refin-

SCC continues to propose inno-

ing IT service level agreements

vative “cloud like” consumption

The desired outcome was a modern, centralised, simplified and agile

hybrid cloud architecture.

IBM’s Power technology remains

models for IBM Power technology

IT infrastructure that was easier to

TalkTalk can now easily manage

to meet the business outcomes

manage, had a much lower opera-

their estate with reduced data si-

that TalkTalk demands.

tional cost and was flexible enough to become the core of a hybrid infrastructure platform that could facilitate future growth.

As part of the broader SCC and TalkTalk Partnership, SCC also helped with: • Relocation of TalkTalk business to new headquarters • Design and fit-out of headquarters with full Audio Visual, meeting room management and conference facilities • Transformation to Microsoft Windows 10 and O365 • Refresh of all end user devices • Inception of new cost-effective Managed Print Services

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shift. “We chose a company to do a single operated capability, in our ninth transition of moving the waves over and it’s going well. In effect, that will give us a single team with a single operating plan. We’ve been working hard on that alongside building some capability on our side of the fence. So, it’s a balance working around our partner strategy, and what we do internally.”

THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TELCO TalkTalk is currently undergoing a digital transformation too and Steen has a track record of delivering transformations, working with companies such as Vodafone, BT, O2, Carphone Warehouse, Sprint, Aircell and Telstra. Back in 2015, TalkTalk worked very closely with partners such as Tech Mahindra and CapGemini on its transformation. Tech Mahindra has been a long-serving partner of TalkTalk in the Operational Support System space. “They have a huge heritage having spun off from BT and they’ve really provided us a backbone to our OSS capability over a number of years. Capgemini is another partner we’ve used for a long time, and 16

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they have also provided capability around our Salesforce developments and around our business systems. We’re also using companies like TCS who provide us with great capability from a business support systems perspective.”

With regards to TalkTalk’s transformation conundrum, Steen points to an old analogy of trying to change an engine while you are driving on the motorway at 100 miles an hour. “The appetite for change in this business is quite extraordinary, and in a good way,” he explains. “We’re working on w w w.ta lkta lk. co. u k

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“ I can safely say, we have created genuine disruption in the marketplace” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

a huge range of projects, and a lot of transformations fail because they are over here trying to build something new, while the business is going in another direction. Getting the transformation and the business activities aligned on a day-to-day level is one of the key things we have done to ensure that the transformation sticks.”

The telco sector is a fast-paced industry, whether it be regulatory

change, market change because of competition or due to core service growth. “Consumption wise, we are growing 30% year on year,” Steen explains. “How do you put 30% more pipes in the ground each year just to keep up with the demand of your customers? That drives a huge amount of change into the business from an IT and a network perspective,” he explains.

“Like many telecoms providers, we’ve got a big old IT estate with over 7,000 servers, which is expensive to manage. w w w.ta lkta lk. co. u k

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SCC provided a range of services and hardware and a whole plethora of resources around this, in terms of how we consolidated that down. We decided to build a hybrid IT model and SCC both procured and installed the hardware.”

IBM is also a key partner to TalkTalk from a technology perspective on consumer and scale systems as well as with data warehouse platforms.

IBM provides the strategic storage platforms for TalkTalk’s hybrid cloud and has helped the success and growth of the telco over the years.

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Another key partner is Infosys, which provides all of TalkTalk’s digital channel capability and online presence, development and testing of applications in that space. “We try to use a range of partners who provide that best capability,” Steen explains. “We find that they all come with different skill sets even though they are all predominantly of a similar mould.

They all have slightly unique capabilities that bring them to life.”

Last year TalkTalk decided, from an operations perspective, to slim things down from five different operator

models, five different partners and five ways of monitoring and reporting to a single system. “We decided to launch a program called One IT Ops and we chose CGI in that respect.

We chose them to take our existing model and improve the operating model and take complexity and cost out. CGI helped in our transformation of moving it to one provider but also changed the processes behind this and worked on the technology consolidation.”

Transformation in place, TalkTalk then worked to drive some of the cost

out, simplify the model, and improve the service. “We are into wave nine of a transformation. We do very short waves, with short deliverables. And I think that’s one of the keys that makes it deliverable because it’s not a big, long-ended, open program for years and years and it’s basically cut up into short sprints of deliverables. So, we are very keen, when it goes off track, to get back on track.”

DATA USEAGE/CAPABILITY Data usage is going up year-on-year and capability has to respond in kind.

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AI-Driven Quality of Experience Optimization “ The ASSIA solution gives us the additional data and visibility we need to understand the various patterns that can affect in-home Wi-Fi performance—and the management and optimization tools to deliver the best experience for our customers.”

Phil Haslam, Chief Network Officer TalkTalk, Plc

sales@assia-inc.com

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www.assia-inc.com

TA L K TA L K : T H E I M P O RTA N C E O F PA RT N E R S

How does TalkTalk deliver more bandwidth to its customers for less? “That’s what creates that sort of dynamic, mature start-up way of thinking.

Because you go, ‘Hey, we can’t just do this. We can’t just continue to throw money at this. We need to come up with different engineering capabilities of doing that.’ I think what customers can see going forward is that exponential growth of bandwidth is going to continue. I’ve got no idea what customers are going to do with that bandwidth in five, 10 years’ time, but

I can absolutely predict with 100% confidence it will be more. So, whether that’s 4K Facebook or more videos, Netflix etc., it’s just going to continue to grow.”

TalkTalk was recently recognised with the SamKnows Industry Invention Award. “SamKnows is awarded by Ofcom as a way of looking at performance across all the providers in the UK. A good example of improving service performance is around the work the TalkTalk team has performed on DNS performance. w w w.ta lkta lk. co. u k

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Ofcom (via SamKnows) measures a series of performance indicators and there is a whole range of metrics about speed, congestion, how are we using the service, but we have been obsessing, particularly in technology recently, around red and green monitoring. So, if you look at our operation here, we can tell if things are on or off.

We can tell what is broken and we can push our suppliers to say, ‘Can you fix this?’ We get 13 billion requests a day to our DNS (domain name service) and 13 billion requests to point traffic in the right direction and we were fourth or 24

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fifth place in the marketplace. We were behind some of our competition. Our DNS servers were working, they were green, but the performance on that from a customer’s perspective was way down the pack.”

The answer, as with much these days, lay in the data – something TalkTalk has an awful lot of. “We did some smart stuff. We did a transformation to move that DNS capability closer to the customer, just like me moving closer to you. As we moved that DNS closer to the customer, the performance of what you see increases exponentially.

“ We really want to be the most recommended broadband provider” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

And we’ve gone from fourth, fifth place in the rankings on SamKnows to being first. So that’s great. It’s only milliseconds, but in this world milliseconds count when you consider that every DNS lookup takes say six, seven milliseconds. You get that down to three, then that is going to transform your customer experience.”

When you’ve got the second largest network in the UK outside of BT, many things can go wrong. “My team is looking across 3,000 sites in the UK as there are always things breaking on a network. That can be diggers

going through the road, it can be floods impacting service in York, there’s always things happening. It’s a case of keeping an eye on that network, rerouting traffic, dispatching engineers, making sure you’re offering that great customer service.”

TalkTalk is currently working with Juniper to roll out a new technology.

“North Star sits on the network, looking at all the traffic flows across the network,” Steen explains. “As it sees outages, it basically dynamically reroutes all that traffic. It knows all the paths across the network and looks w w w.ta lkta lk. co. u k

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at how much traffic is flowing across it and can dynamically reroute that real-time, in what would take an engineer maybe five or 10 minutes to do.

Now, when you’ve got 3,000 sites and 5,000 circuits, and four million customers, the ability to knock minutes off that and improve is phenomenal. We’ve got that deployed on our network, so it’s running side by side with our engineers. We’ve not completely let the machines take over yet, however. We’re testing it, looking at the recommendations it makes and then, this year, as we go into half-year, we’ll deploy it onto the network where it will be autonomous.”

On the customer side, TalkTalk has been partnering with ASSIA to enable data-driving decisions with capability

“ We get 13 billion requests a day to our DNS (domain name service) and 13 billion requests to point traffic in the right direction” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

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called CloudCheck. CloudCheck is a piece of software that sits on the router in the home and it scans your environment “in a good way” to collect data in terms of the WIFI signal strength, what WIFI your neighbours use and how you can optimise that in-home environment.

“It will tune your environment to get the best out of it. But also, as a customer, it provides you with the data.”

So, with numerous changes all occurring at once, how does Steen view the company’s progress? “Well, we’ve still got a lot to do. We really want to be the most recommended broadband provider and acknowledge that we’ve had our hiccups along the way in terms of growing the business, but I personally believe that if TalkTalk hadn’t originated, then people would be paying far more for their broadband services than they do today. I can safely say, we have created genuine disruption in the marketplace.”

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