Catenate

SWISSCOM: managing complexity

Implementing ideas at the speed of light


Case study

In order to match Swisscom’s needs, Catenate has set up a reliable and effective outsourcing process for all the development activities. This transition had to be managed in parallel to the normal development activities, as the daily business had to continue.

Business need

With the merge of their fixed and mobile business, Swisscom has decided to build a vast TIBCO integration layer by using state-of-the-art integration and SOA technologies, enhanced by TIBCO Business Process Management Software and the TIBCO Fulfillment Order Suite¹ for Order Management. Having several major business initiatives running in parallel in order to introduce new products into a challenging market and to manage the technology transition in network and IT, the frequency of changes increased massively, which resulted in the need for a flexible, scaling, dynamic and performing IT department. This TIBCO Integration layer has built the bridge between fixed and mobile business, to enable convergent services. In addition to that, it was also designed, to enable this technology transition from an IT with applications at the end of their lifecycle to a modern IT application landscape.

Solutions

Already from the start of this challenge Swisscom identified several partner to support in the different domains all over their IT. As Catenate was supporting Swisscom and TIBCO as a software vendor already since TIBCO was introduced in the Swisscom group, Catenate was part of this team from the beginning and was providing architectural, methodical and development experts to the Swisscom Integration department.

In order to stabilize the development capabilities, and to align with their sourcing strategy, Swisscom decided to hand out development tasks to three vendors, one of them Catenate.

Implementation Approach

In oder to match Swisscom’s needs, Catenate has set up a reliable and effective outsourcing process for all the development activities. This transition had to be managed in parallel to the standard development activities, as the daily business had to continue.

Catenate introduced a near shore setup for the development to Swisscom by having a local Bridgehead as a mediator between Swisscom and the internal TIBCO development factory in Rome, IT, which is also delivering similar services to other clients.

One of the key elements for that approach is the alignment of the development processes from clients to the factory approach. Catenate managed this transition of skills without any interference of the clients business within few weeks.

Benefits

By introducing an industrialized near shore factory development model Swisscom could achieve major benefits, within a very short time without any impact to the daily business. One major achievement was the significant reduction of costs. As savings in labor between the near shore center in Italy and the client location in Switzerland costs cover the additional effort in handovers easily. Another cost saving was achieved, as the capacity is always adjusted to the needs of Swisscom.

As the team is delivering similar services to multiple clients, the capacity provided to one dedicated client can always be adjusted to the needs, as every team member is not only assigned to one but to multiple clients. This also ensures also short reaction times in any urgent development request. This approach is also supportive to increase quality, as the experience per team member always covers multiple engagements.

Swisscom has gained major benefits by deciding to use well defined near shore development model. By reducing costs, the available budget can be spent more efficiently, increasing IT capabilities and ensuring time to market in parallel.

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