BT Group moves from mainframe to cloud with Kyndryl, aims for £17m annual savings

LONDON, 31 January 2023—BT Group’s digital unit today announces it is working with Kyndryl on a ground-breaking program to move a number of the group’s mainframe applications serving its legacy copper business and consumer broadband products to the cloud.

The unique and complex project will see the digital entity move critical legacy applications that cannot be shut down in the short term to the cloud, allowing it to operate its copper broadband infrastructure in a modern way. The ten-year partnership, which draws on Kyndryl’s hyper-scalability and partner ecosystem, will allow BT Group to reduce mainframe operating costs and energy consumption by 70%, leading to savings worth more than £17 million a year by 2026.

“We like to think outside the box to solve complex problems – such as how to move from mainframes given the prohibitive increase in legacy infrastructure costs – without rewriting decades-old applications,” explains Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at BT Group. “With that mindset, working with Kyndryl, we figured out how to turn legacy mainframes into modern digital apps and run them at a fraction of the cost.”

Kyndryl, which currently operates BT Group’s mainframe fleet, is extending its partnership with BT to deliver the transformation project by 2026, accelerating efforts to reduce costs and unlock data insights within these key applications. As part of the project, some applications are being “retired” (contributing to the group’s goal of getting to fewer than 500 strategic systems by 2027, which simplifies the technology space), “refactored” (redeveloped into BT Group’s existing strategic systems and architecture) or rehosted (repackaged to operate in a cloud environment).

By moving to the cloud, applications will become more ‘digital’ with application programming interfaces (APIs) and microservices capabilities designed to help integrate the value of data across wider BT Group systems and drive innovation through automation, while reducing costs. Applications will be connected to BT Group’s service management platform, supporting its ‘AIOps’ self-healing IT estate model, reducing the risk of downtime and accelerating and automating fixes. It will improve the ability of other applications to use data and capabilities within the mainframe applications, giving rise to more seamless customer experiences, and supporting customers with the migration to modern fiber services as the legacy copper networks are retired in the coming years.

“It is exciting to be working with BT Group on such an ambitious and critical programme. Mainframe to cloud migration extends the utility and lifespan of these applications in a modern, microservices-led, cloud-centric way and helps unlock intelligent data insights. We are excited to draw on our deep knowledge, ecosystem of partners and community of industry-leading experts to help deliver this transformation,” comments Petra Goude, Global Practice Leader, Core Enterprise & zCloud, Kyndryl.

About Kyndryl
Kyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services serving thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. For more information, visit www.kyndryl.com.

About BT Group
BT Group is the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications and related secure digital products, solutions and services. We also provide managed telecommunications, security and network and IT infrastructure services to customers in 180 countries.

BT Group consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer serving individuals and families in the UK; Enterprise and Global are our UK and International business focused units respectively; Openreach is an independently managed, wholly owned subsidiary that wholesales fixed access infrastructure services to its customers – over 650 communications providers across the UK.

For the year ending 31 March 2022, BT Group’s reported revenue was £20,850m with reported profit before tax of £1,963m.

British Telecommunications plc is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and includes virtually all businesses and assets of BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/about

About BT
BT Group is the UK’s leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications and related secure digital products, solutions and services. We also provide managed telecommunications, security and network and IT infrastructure services to customers in 180 countries.

BT Group consists of three customer-facing units: Consumer serving individuals and families in the UK; BT Business* covers companies and public services in the UK and internationally; Openreach is an independently managed, wholly owned subsidiary that wholesales fixed access infrastructure services to its customers – over 650 communications providers across the UK.

British Telecommunications plc is a wholly owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and includes virtually all businesses and assets of BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/about

*BT Business was formed on 1 January 2023 from the combination of the former Enterprise and Global units. It will start reporting as a single entity from 1 April 2023, with pro forma reporting information to be produced ahead of BT Group’s Q1 FY24 results.