• BT Group’s digital unit is simplifying much of the orchestration and delivery of its network services for customer orders with Blue Planet, speeding customer service delivery
• Innovative plans will simplify design, configuration and activation of network services across all the Group’s consumer and business products
• Additional benefits will come from reducing engineering effort and the shutdown of half a dozen legacy systems; delivery times will reduce significantly thanks to standardisation and simplification of our service catalog and key processes

BT Group’s Digital Unit today announces it is working with Blue Planet, a division of Ciena (NYSE:CIEN), to simplify the way it automates the orchestration and delivery of network services as part of customer orders and service requests, across the Group’s Consumer and Business products. The move improves customer experience with services going live quicker, reduces engineering effort and helps speed new propositions to market.

What this means in practice is that when a customer hits ‘buy’ on a broadband product, the design, configuration and activation of network services, from local network through to BT’s 21C core network, to Openreach systems and the wider internet, will be automated by the Blue Planet platform. Similarly, if changes are made in service, as is common for BT’s business customers, Blue Planet can streamline the process of implementing those adjustments, adding new capacity, lines or capabilities dynamically.

This dramatic simplification eliminates more than half a dozen legacy systems currently delivering service orchestration, reducing engineering cost and complexity, and significantly reducing the amount of time customers need to spend completing orders. It also allows BT Group to develop and deploy new propositions more rapidly, as the network orchestration stage of product development is substantially simplified. Similarly, BT’s business customers can experience more rapid, in-service change. The standardised, tightly coupled, cloud-native approach to service order management and orchestration adheres to the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture. This makes it easier for BT Group to manage fault discovery and self-healing, driving its wider ‘AI Ops’ ambition and further boosting customer experience.

The new systems are already in production in BT Group’s Consumer business, where they are orchestrating the delivery of EE Fibre broadband services.

“Using strategic technology systems to boost customer experience is a key goal of our modernisation programme. Automation, simplification and consolidation is a key route through which we will unlock productivity and speed,” explains Josie Smith, Chief Architect, Digital at BT Group. “With Blue Planet’s help, we are cutting legacy costs and processes and speeding time to market across our businesses.”

Blue Planet has also committed to joint development efforts with BT Group’s Digital unit on AWS, the Group’s preferred cloud supplier for business application workloads.

“With open, cloud-native automation at the forefront of its OSS modernization, Blue Planet will support BT Group’s ambition to simplify their operations and digitize the customer experience,” comments Joe Cumello, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Blue Planet. “This collaboration is already delivering huge learnings and dividends and has even greater potential as we widen our rollout across BT’s consumer and business customer journeys.”