Keeping BT's tech agile(continued)
 By Aaron Tan, ZDNet Asia
 Friday, Dec 22 2006 10:42 AM

A recent survey by U.K.-based Which magazine indicated that just 23 per cent of BT's customers were very satisfied with the overall level of service they received. Customers also said BT's bills were the most difficult to understand. Do you have any thoughts on that?
The numbers indicate there's much optimization of customer experience that's yet to be done. The companies that do that very effectively will differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack. The evidence reinforces my thesis that you will win in the marketplace not just by having great products and being early to market, but by offering a great customer experience.

BT has a scouting program to acquire technologies that will be used on its 21st Century Network (21CN). Is there a similar program for IT talent?
We do source our technology globally now. In 21CN, you'll find American, European and Asian companies that we work with. It's truly a globally sourced piece of innovation, drawing on the best companies and talent across the globe.

We do source IT talent globally. If you look at our hires in the last 12 months, you will see that we are recruiting from the best U.K. universities, but you will also find people from Europe, Asia and America. If you want the best talent, you shop globally, not just in your own backyard. There's global competition for top talent and you have to be out where the talent is emerging. We're also looking to new and untapped sources of talent, such as Russia.

India, the world's outsourcing center, is well-known for its highly proficient IT workforce. Do you see India's position being overshadowed by other countries such as China?
Our relationship with India is extremely longstanding. I've been sourcing for IT talent from India for 12 years. We have a very large joint venture in India called Tech Mahindra. As a source of IT talent, India is up there in the top five. They have a tremendous education system with a big focus on technical subjects, with a significant number of good universities that generate large numbers of graduates every year.

I find the Indian IT guys very well-educated, hardworking and willing to learn. Often they graduate with IT skills, and the development for them is in understanding the businesses they are serving. India most certainly is not going to disappear as a major source of IT services in future.

They do face challenges in supply, however. The number of IT companies has surged over the last few years. Inside India, there is a very ferocious battle for talent, and that's reflected in significant wage inflation of 20 percent.

We're also seeing lots of churn. You can build teams fast in India because there is an abundance of skilled labor, but can you retain those teams? One of the things that you need to do to deliver and sustain very large IT platforms is you've got to maintain consistency in personnel for a reasonable period of time.

As prices go up and supply problems become more manifest in India, I'm sure other markets for talented IT people like China, Russia and Eastern Europe will emerge. But I think not only will you see companies coming out of those new locations for IT services, you'll also see Indian companies establishing bases in countries such as China.

What have been some of the challenges, as far as the work on 21CN is concerned from an IT perspective?
The 21CN program is hugely ambitious, because unlike other service providers, our goal is not to build another overlaying network based on IP (Internet Protocol) and MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching). Our intention is to replace our current networks with one converged core network that's truly multi-service. We will carry voice, data and other services on one network.

One of the key challenges has been collaborative work with the network partners, because many of them are building elements of the 21CN network. For example, we work very closely with Hewlett-Packard (HP) to build key domain management systems, and we have to facilitate collaboration between HP and Fujitsu, which is pioneering in the network's access domain. The challenge is in getting our big IT vendors to collaborate with network vendors in a new space, where we are establishing standards as we go.

Another challenge in the IT space is we're trying to do two things at the same time. One is to build IT to support a new [21CN] network, while changing our legacy systems for our new strategic IT platforms. That's immensely challenging, but extremely exciting. It's a bit like changing the engines on the plane while you're trying to fly along.

The other big challenge is in transfer engineering, as we term it. While you can build a new set of network and service management systems for a new network, the parallel challenge is how you migrate 30 million customers and their data from old systems onto a brand new network and systems without a glitch. That's a mammoth task.

Also, as we explore the customer data on existing systems, we've to tackle data quality issues during the migration process. We not only have to transfer data from old to new systems, we also have to go through the rigorous process of cleansing that data, while eliminating data errors that were built up--not just over years but decades--on some of these older systems.