ATT Tech Dev Transformation Whitepaper PDF

AT&T Technology Transformation
February 22, 2017
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................3
Industry Trends and the Case for Change ....................................................................8

Application Rationalization ................................................................................................ 9
Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network ................................................ 12
Building Platforms for the Future .................................................................................... 19
Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer

Experience – Realizing Digital First .................................................................................. 31
Building a Big Data Platform and Becoming a Data Driven Business .............................. 33
Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future .................................... 38
Conclusion........................................................................................................................... 42
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Executive Summary
AT&T’s mission is to connect people with their world everywhere they live, work and play –
and do it better than anyone else. To do this, the company must deliver an effortless customer
experience; lead in connectivity and integrated solutions; serve its customers globally; operate
with an industry-leading cost structure; and equip its people for the future. AT&T’s Technology
and Operations (ATO) and IT organizations are responsible for enabling and delivering the
capabilities critical to the company’s success. However, ATO and IT faced significant challenges
in realizing the needs of the business: hyper data growth was outstripping the capacity of the
factory and expected performance improvements from Moore’s Law; costs were rapidly
increasing to deliver on growth and to develop new products to meet the technology shift to
an all IP world; cycle times for service delivery and product development were not keeping
pace with the needs of customers and the marketplace; the organization was saddled with
disparate legacy systems resulting from a string of acquisitions; the organization was siloed
and built for delivery of traditional network services; and the employee skills needed to be
refreshed to compete in an IP and software driven world.
In short, AT&T needed to change how it worked.
The company needed a technology and organizational transformation to overcome these

hurdles to compete in an all IP world; and to create the business velocity necessary to meet
its objectives, while enhancing service delivery and the customer experience at the same
time. This whitepaper provides an overview of AT&T’s key plays to transform using technology
and innovation to deliver an architecture, platforms and systems, and organization built for
the future.
The key elements for AT&T’s Technology Transformation cover six major categories:
Application Rationalization
Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network
Building Platforms for the Future
Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer Experience
Big Data and Becoming a Data Driven Business
Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future
Application Rationalization:
Reducing complexity and simplifying processes is critical to the success of any company. AT&T
has been in business for roughly 140 years. The company regularly monitors, analyzes and, when
appropriate, retires and replaces systems and capabilities that may no longer be relevant. In
addition, mergers and acquisitions bring great benefits as well as legacy systems AT&T may no
longer need. Best practices – and systems associated with those best practices – are reviewed to
determine integration capabilities, scalability and cost. These reviews extend well beyond a
functional view of applications to include the full scope of AT&T’s Target Architecture. AT&T’s
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framework to Identify, Validate, Fund and Rationalize has reduced the application portfolio
by 55% since 2007. That has resulted in a dramatically simplified portfolio and over $700M in
reduced cost.
Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network:

In parallel with the application rationalization effort, AT&T has been on an aggressive multi-
year journey to migrate target enterprise and network applications to the cloud. This involves
building a single integrated cloud called the AT&T Integrated Cloud or AIC to house both IT
applications and AT&T’s Software Defined Network functions (SDN). For those applications
that are not retiring over the next 5 years, AT&T is migrating them to the AIC which is shared
by internal and external customers alike. The migration of the remaining application portfolio
to the cloud improves hardware use and lowers maintenance, power and other operating costs,
while improving business flexibility. At the end of 2015, AT&T had migrated 64% of the target
application portfolio to the cloud. It will continue to add new applications with better cycle
times due to the improved business flexibility. Migrating IT applications from dedicated to cloud
infrastructure has increased use of IT assets through reduction of compute cores by over 50%.
Further reductions in cost structure (Total Cost of Ownership) were realized by using open
source technologies, automating manual center operations, and providing re-usable frame-
works and software assets for developers to leverage.
As AT&T launched a software defined network transformation to transition from purpose-built

network appliances to open, white box commodity hardware that is virtualized, using the same
AIC was a natural and efficient extension. AT&T is liberating network functions from the same
purpose-built appliances into stand-alone software components, and managing the full lifecycle
of these virtualized network functions via AIC working in conjunction with both global and local
software controllers. Taking this approach prevents vendor lock in and allows AT&T to have an
open, flexible and modular architecture that scales to meet the explosive demand at lower cost,
increasing speed of feature delivery, and providing much greater agility.
To support both IT and Network workloads, AT&T also created ECOMP (Enhanced Control
Orchestration Management and Policy) to provide a design time and execution time framework
that tightly integrates all AT&T systems with AIC to improve the customer experience. In
addition, both IT and Network functions use a common security platform called ASTRA, which
provides security for the cloud in the cloud. ASTRA is discussed in more detail in the platforms
section of the whitepaper.
AIC creates a competitive advantage by increasing feature deployment velocity and agility via
automated software controls and orchestration in a secure cloud and resilient environment.
Building Platforms for the Future:

AT&T has led the industry in rethinking how companies should design and build their networks.
The traditional model relied on complex and specialized hardware that was purpose built to
perform network functions. To keep up with the customer demand the industry is experiencing,
AT&T is in the midst of a software transformation. The transformation includes virtualizing
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network functions; creating platforms that open up access to the network and applications
via application programming interfaces, or APIs; and applying a new security and resiliency
approach to make these platforms more secure and reliable in the cloud.
Just as consumers replaced their bulky stereos with streaming music apps on their smartphones
and tablets, AT&T is turning routers, firewalls and other network equipment into virtual
functions running on commodity hardware in the cloud. By separating the hardware from the
software, AT&T can rapidly make changes to the platform and can extend real time management
of the service to the customer through digital portals, such as AT&T’s Managed Internet Service
On Demand bandwidth adjustments. The company announced its software-defined networking
(SDN) strategy in 2014 with plans to virtualize 75% of the network by 2020. AT&T exceeded its
first major milestone by virtualizing almost 6% in 2015. In 2016, AT&T will accelerate to 30% of
functions virtualized. Additionally, the company already has 14 million wireless customers on its
virtualized network, almost certainly the largest implementation in the world. AT&T will migrate
millions more in 2016.
In the hyper-growth environment, it was essential for AT&T to accelerate and more efficiently
develop new products, services, and technology by taking advantage of easy-to-use APIs. APIs
have rapidly become the common language of integration, facilitating sharing of content and
data between applications. In 2015 alone, AT&T reused 2,141 APIs in meeting new AT&T
business needs, while reducing cycle time from 6 months when APIs are not reused, to 20 days
when APIs are reused; while taking advantage of reduced delivery costs at the same time. In
2015, the API platform supported over 21 billion calls per month. APIs are becoming the next
generation of dial tone on the internet, the framework that enables all the capabilities people
have come to rely on.
Security starts with comprehensive identity and access management that uses strong multifactor
user credentials, biometric information, and a user’s mobile device, as an effortless way to
protect infrastructure, systems and applications. In the cloud, ASTRA provides the granular
security policy engine, which allows the company to create “rings” of protection at the cloud
perimeter, tenant, and workload levels. These rings act as a micro-perimeter for every asset
AT&T wants to protect. Security policies created for one asset can automatically apply to new
instances of that asset type. And when trouble occurs, AT&T’s Threat Analytics platform uses
event data from ASTRA and other security and networking systems to quickly detect and
characterize many types of attacks. These capabilities provide valuable information that can help
mitigate attacks before they become a problem by leveraging Big Data systems and the expertise
of seasoned analysts. AT&T’s moving beyond protection into prediction through advanced threat
analytics capabilities; and are offering similar security services to its customers.
These leading edge systems are critical for protecting AT&T’s infrastructure, systems and
network from attack. In addition, AT&T strategically plans and embeds resiliency and security
designs into its software platforms, infrastructure and operations.
When creating or updating a system or environment, the company employs the “Ask Yourself”
principle and ask the questions "how can I secure this application from a malicious person", and
"how can I make this more resilient to attack and outage". When developers and engineers ask
these questions, and include them in development and operations, they are living the "Resiliency
by Design" philosophy. Resiliency and security by design are critical components to be "baked in"
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starting at the design phase and continuing through the development and operations of AT&T’s
business systems. This enables AT&T to deliver more secure and robust software, with higher
quality and a lower cost over the lifecycle of applications.
Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer Experience:

AT&T set a bold strategy to make effortless digital experiences the primary means of serving our
customers by 2020.
AT&T launched an aggressive Digital First strategy to transform the business by leading with
personalized, effortless digital experiences with a goal to move 80% of customer interactions
to digital channels by 2020. This is where customers want the company to go. Research
indicates 76% of AT&T’s post-paid wireless customers indicated prefer digital channels for
service experiences, with the first choice being mobile. Expanding both the breadth and depth
of AT&T’s digital capabilities is the core of enabling the “smart integrated experience” for
customers. AT&T is well on its way. In 2015, 76.3% of AT&T customer interactions were digital.
The personalization of this digital and mobile-enabled experience through customer insights is
another dimension to this transformation. AT&T is making great progress building the tools and
capabilities to provide these key insights. The company focuses on anticipating what customers
need to ensure an effortless experience; and Big Data is providing AT&T with the information
necessary to provide a personalized experience.
Big Data and Becoming a Data Driven Business:

AT&T is using Big Data to leverage its scale with speed to deliver key insights into its own
enterprise and customers. These same capabilities are also being used to provide AT&T’s
business customers the key insights necessary to run their businesses better.
Moving from a system-centric culture to a data-driven culture requires new thinking in

technology and security including platforms, privacy, compliance, tools, scale, design, and data
availability. At AT&T, a cross-discipline team created a Big Data reference architecture that can
scale to our size and also be flexible enough to support multiple use cases concurrently. AT&T
designed this architecture from the start with security and privacy in mind, building platforms
to provide consent management, encryption, stringent access security, and auditability, while
allowing us to anonymize and aggregate data for broader analysis. New technologies for data
movement to promote reuse (Data Router) and near real-time data availability (Message Router)
were built in-house to support easy data sharing so new insights can be brought to market
quickly. Building on these capabilities, AT&T has grown from two petabytes in Hadoop lakes to
20 petabytes in 1.5 years. Scaling beyond that is very efficient due to modular data center design
principles that are effectively plug-and-play. And with the speed of Big Data tool advancement,
a pipeline of new features is constantly available to support new and innovative use cases.
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AT&T has already seen significant savings through data driven analytics and decision making.
None of this would have been possible before the era of Big Data due to the sheer size of the
data sets involved, the maturity and accessibility of advanced tools, and the prohibitive cost
of storing petabytes of data.
A corporate-wide capabilities evolution is equipping AT&T employees with the skills of the
future. And when these groups work together in this new paradigm – supported on the fly
by trusted, voluminous data that can be sliced and compiled in previously impossible ways –
amazing things happen. Data begins to drive, not measure, the business. Collaboration occurs
across disciplines. New business opportunities are found. The entire business is fueled by data.
Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future:

To be successful with a large scale technology transformation over the next decade, AT&T had
to ensure not only that the organization was structured properly, but that the workforce was
prepared to take on the skills needed for the future.
The overlap between IT and network was clear in this software-centric network future, so it no
longer made sense to have separate IT and network organizations. The IT and network teams
were restructured to a plan, build, and run model. The two teams were reorganized by the
functions they were performing. As examples: teams doing IT and network architecture were
combined into a single “plan” function; teams doing IT and network software development
were combined into the “build” function; and teams operating the IT data centers and network
hardware were combine into the “run” function.
In addition, AT&T needed new skills to keep up with the changes in the industry. AT&T managers
needed to be reskilled. The country’s largest fulltime union workforce also needed new skills to
operate successfully in the future. AT&T could not depend on hiring alone to bring in new talent,
as the institutional knowledge and experience of the employee base is critical to future success.
AT&T employees needed to transform from hardware skills to software skills; from wireline TDM
to IP and cloud skills; and from data reporters to data analysts and scientists.
AT&T developed a competency-based program requiring technical education, hands on

application of the training through apprenticeships and project based opportunities, as well as
certification programs. To assist with the skills pivot, an online master’s program was created at
Georgia Tech; 10 nanodegrees were developed, and AT&T created 246 unique online Emerging
Technology courses so employees could follow continuous learning practices at their own pace.
All of these resources were made available to employees to facilitate building skills of the future.
These aren’t one time activities, and training alone doesn’t necessarily mean an employee has
the competencies to perform a role of the future. It is an ongoing effort to keep employees’ skills
fresh and relevant. To that end, AT&T invests roughly $280 million annually to keep up with the
necessary pace of new content development and delivery.
Technical education coupled with defining the way AT&T employees work together; how work
is done in the future; and how AT&T matches employee competencies and skills to jobs are all
necessary elements to building a workforce of the future.
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By executing plays in these 6 transformational areas, ATO and IT have successfully reduced
overall cash operating expenses year over year, despite continuous demands to deliver more.
Those expense reductions allow re-investment in the transformational initiatives, yielding a
reduction in expense of 3% or more every year, net of reinvestment. The result is a transformed
architecture that has unprecedented speed in delivering new and scaled business functionality,
which can be used as an effective weapon to combat a complex and fast changing marketplace.
This whitepaper will explore each of these six major categories in more detail in the
following pages.
Industry Trends and the Case for Change

AT&T is at the epicenter of innovation and growth for virtually every industry and consumer
segment. Innovation is coming from everywhere, driving information-rich products and services.
Customers are demanding global product and support experiences that are mobile, virtual,
effortless and ultrafast. Organizational change is the new norm, requiring greater agility, faster
speed-to-market and continuous skill development. Industry and consumer trends clearly inform
and shape priorities for transformative change within AT&T. At the same time, AT&T is
rethinking how information and entertainment is managed, consumed and monetized.
AT&T sees continued growth in data consumption, driven by consumer and business demand for
high-definition voice and video streaming with varying bandwidth and latency requirements. The
increasing sophistication and scale of security threats require vigilance and innovation to protect
our assets, business operations and our customer’s information. Demand for unbundling and
exposing of services (e.g. location, order, payment, authentication, etc.) accelerates our
enterprise business and promotes collaborative innovation. The explosion to billions of network
endpoints through the Internet of Things (wearables, smartphones, “connected cars” and other
telemetric devices) is creating emerging marketplace opportunities for “smart” capabilities and
eco-systems ranging from homes, to enterprises, to cities. Underlying every trend is the need for
manageable, secure, low-latency, and capital-efficient networks that can quickly scale to meet
demand driven by these trends.
AT&T designs, builds and operates the technology platforms that are used externally and
internally to support customers, business units, and employee and partner collaborators. To
respond to and accelerate industry and consumer trends, AT&T is moving technology platforms
to an open, service-based architecture, built with a digital-first mindset using efficient delivery
frameworks (Agile and DevOps), and running in a manageable cloud eco-system. AT&T is also
shifting from a purpose-built hardware network architecture to a software-centric network
powered by virtualized network functions. Advanced orchestration and control technologies
give the customer control (to optimize speed, quality and cost) and are foundational to an
autonomous network that takes action on its own to adjust capacity, remove failure points
and address security threats.
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These transformations are driving product and channel agnostic platforms that have lower
operational cost and will help AT&T deliver scalable on-demand products and services with
integrated, seamless experiences across customer segments for ordering, using and paying
for products.
Application Rationalization
Many people think of “technology transformation” as simply moving to the next big thing.
The truth is that successful transformation is often a journey that begins right in one’s own
back yard. Rarely does an organization have the unencumbered freedom to simply jump
forward. Existing technology is critical to daily business operations and must be guarded.
However, that existing technology often suffers from “technical debt” – a lack of efficiency
due to historical investments that no longer align with the business they were originally
designed to support. Addressing the efficiency of an existing application portfolio can be
transformational in its own right, and having a robust application rationalization program
is key to extracting that value.
Application rationalization at AT&T begins with a simple methodology. This methodology is

a repeatable process to efficiently and effectively drive rationalization opportunities that
support business optimization and deliver an industry leading cost structure. The repeatability
of these activities is key. Each step becomes an iteration in a constant feedback loop:
Identify – Inventory and classify redundant services by application area

Validate – Use dedicated teams to proactively validate, scope,
and solution consolidation opportunities
Fund – Develop business cases to reflect improved capabilities
and savings achieved through consolidation
Rationalize – Manage implementation all the way thru application
retirement to ensure goals are realized
IDENTIFY
Identify establishes the foundation necessary to be successful at application rationalization.

The cornerstone of this foundation is a robust set of tools and processes to inventory and classify
the portfolio. An application portfolio catalog has been established as the database of record for
all business application metadata. Processes attend to the quality and timeliness of the data and
ensure assets are classified properly, as everything is not an “application” (sub-apps, tools, etc.).
A key process under Identify is functional domain analysis. Functional domains establish
groups for applications that serve similar functions to the business, to identify redundancies.
Using a telecom industry framework as a starting point, an AT&T-specific view was established
with 35 functional categories. When new applications are brought into the portfolio, they
are first classified by functional domain. Each iteration of the entire Rationalization process
uses the output of classifying applications by functional domain as the starting point for
analyzing redundancies.
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A second key process under Identify is to establish a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model.
AT&T’s model tracks all organizational costs on an application-by-application basis. Updated
monthly, the direct costs (hours charged to a specific application) are added to indirect costs
(overhead costs spread via an allocation model). Every dollar spent in the organization is tied
to an application. This TCO figure is a very valuable rationalization benefit indicator. An
organization can’t determine if it’s worth spending money and energy to retire an application
unless it knows how much it will save by doing so.
The final key process under Identify is assigning application leveragability. It is important to
define a simple labeling scheme that will resonate across the entire organization and help drive
action. AT&T uses four labels: Core, Invest, Contain, or Sunset. Each application wears only one
label. It can be a fully established target state application (core), or an application worth
investing in to get it there (invest). It can also be an application already identified and funded
for retirement (sunset), or one that is a prime target for future rationalization (contain).
Establishing these simple labels is a highly effective way to direct and control investment
throughout the portfolio.
VALIDATE
The second step in the overall application rationalization methodology is Validate. This step
uses dedicated teams to proactively validate, scope, and solution consolidation opportunities.
Some retirement candidates will be validated as functionally isolated. More often, some level
of business function or customer data must still be cared for after the application is retired.
In those cases, the validated solution must develop the source application to target application
mapping required to facilitate rationalization of the source. Overall, validation produces the
most actionable results. It has proven to drive significant value. So it becomes a critical
investment for the overall rationalization process.
An important technical foundation underlies the validation phase. That foundation is Target
Architecture. While validation activities are very focused on comparing and contrasting the
business functionality of redundant applications, evaluation of an application’s adherence to
AT&T’s standards and strategies is also critical through this phase. Technology Development
has a robust set of processes to define and manage Technology Strategies and Standards (TSS)
across the company. TechDev defines critical non-functional capabilities through TSS, including
Cloud Enablement, Open APIs, Open Source Software, and many others. The collection of these
strategies and standards along with the application leveragability of Core/Invest represent
AT&T’s Target Architecture. Any decisions made thru this validation phase will extend beyond
just a functional view to include the full scope of Target Architecture.
Validation is initiated simultaneously through two different perspectives: product focus and
application function focus. Product focused efforts analyze groups of applications in vertical
rationalization streams, looking at applications that share common products, customers,
departments, or business units. Application function focused efforts analyze groups of
applications in horizontal rationalization streams, looking at applications that share common
functions like sales, ordering or billing. This grouping is important. Most applications do not live
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in isolation. They’re part of an application ecosystem. Teams have to look at these groups to
understand their relationships. This understanding then drives the identification of the overlaps
that ultimately identify rationalization opportunities.
The IT Legacy Transformation (ILT) program, one of the largest single rationalization initiatives
at AT&T, is an example of how a product/vertical stream drives decision-making. AT&T launched
ILT to address the costs of supporting the ever-shrinking base of legacy telco products like
consumer wireline voice. Product-focused validation determined the scope of applications for
rationalization by focusing intently on any and all applications that either completely or mostly
supported the ordering and billing of these legacy telco products.
The functional/horizontal perspective of validation was the primary method for driving the
rationalization opportunities from AT&T’s merger with DIRECTV. Because it was formerly
a complete standalone business, DIRECTV had an application portfolio that served an entire
set of business operations. Therefore the Identify phase grouped applications into functional
categories up and down the portfolio stack. Validation teams then tackled each functional
area independently to drive decisions for the best solution path going forward.
FUND
Once rationalization opportunities have a firm solution path, AT&T moves them to the funding
phase. The Fund step develops the business case view to reflect the investments necessary and
the savings expected for each validated rationalization opportunity. The biggest investment
areas include closing functional gaps in target applications, migrating and/or converting data
and customers to the target applications, and calculating the costs associated with the actual
application and system shutdown. Savings in the business case are naturally weighted towards
the end of the rationalization period when the applications are finally shut down and all the
surrounding maintenance and support costs can be reclaimed. However, it is also vital to build
a plan that starts accumulating incremental savings on day one. This improves the overall health
of the business case. Costs for applications being retired can be reduced right away through
focused governance to avoid new investment and resetting service level agreements that reduce
support costs. Just like compounding interest, small savings captured early in a retirement
program lifecycle can add up to significant savings.
An additional key component of the Fund step is the business case evergreen process. Larger
application rationalization programs with groups of applications can have implementation plans
that stretch out over years. With an ever-increasing pace of business and technology changes all
around, there can easily be changes in strategy, priorities, and/or product and technology
roadmaps within the active lifecycle of a rationalization program. An explicit process to
evergreen or re-validate a program’s business case becomes critical at least annually, or more
frequently as the environment dictates.
RATIONALIZE
With funding complete, the final step of Rationalize kicks off to manage implementation all the
way through application retirement and resource reclamation. Attention to detail is vital. An
application simply can’t be retired unless every single customer served by that application is
cared for elsewhere, mostly in target applications. The execution team must have an extremely
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thorough process that addresses every single customer, interface, and data element. This deep
persistence is absolutely a key to success.
Throughout the Rationalize step, AT&T continuously reviews business case benefits.
The company establishes up front a phased plan for savings targets. Monthly reports showing
actual savings highlight progress throughout the program. The actual savings view is achieved by
using the TCO model developed for the Identify step. Since that cost model is updated monthly,
incremental savings can be tracked as cost declines on an application by application basis.
While application retirement is the ultimate goal of rationalization, the case is not complete
without resource reclamation. Since programs like this have been underway at AT&T for
many years, the relevant support teams are well versed in this step. Development and support
teams create a personnel reassignment plan. The operations team reclaims server and storage
hardware and either disposes of it or repurposes it. Software components like database licenses
are also reclaimed and reused as appropriate. The full and complete transition of the people
and disposition of the technology used to support an application is what truly allows the
business case to be successfully closed out.
The transformation opportunity provided thru application rationalization is very real and AT&T
has been incredibly successful at tapping into this value stream. There have been more than a
few speed bumps encountered along the way and those lessons learned have helped to define
and refine the methodology shared here. Thanks to unwavering leadership support, none of
the speed bumps have inhibited success. Since 2007, the AT&T Application Portfolio has been
reduced by 55%. A total of 3,492 application retirements have been completed program-to-date
with total annualized savings of $740M. Beyond these specific cost savings, the business has
received huge intangible benefits from a greatly simplified technology ecosystem. Critical to
our success is an obsessive and consistent focus on iterating through this model, month in and
month out, year in and year out. Business functions and priorities are always changing and the
focus of the application portfolio must continue to adapt.
Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network

In parallel with the application rationalization effort, AT&T has been on an aggressive multiyear
journey to migrate target enterprise and network applications to the cloud. This is one of the
largest and most complex efforts in the world. The following objectives set the agenda for the
company’s cloud efforts:
Build an integrated cloud for IT applications and AT&T’s software-centric network

Migrate IT applications from dedicated to cloud infrastructure, increasing use of IT assets
through reduction of compute cores by greater than 50%
Further reduce cost structure (Total Cost of Ownership) by using open source technologies,
automating manual center operations, and providing re-usable frameworks and software
assets for developers to leverage
Create a competitive advantage for AT&T by increasing feature deployment velocity
and agility via automated software controls and orchestration
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AT&T used these objectives to define a set of key principles for its infrastructure transformation
to a world-class cloud platform.
AT&T’s Cloud Transformation Principles
Leverage Open Automate, Design Selectively Target Strategic Extend the Cloud to be
Source and AT&T’s Deploy and Manage IT Applications for Migration the Foundation of AT&T’s
Innovation at Scale to the Cloud SDN Transformation
PRINCIPLE 1: LEVERAGE OPEN SOURCE AND AT&T’S INNOVATION
AT&T’s cloud transformation began with the need for a common platform to support both IT
and network workloads. The company created a three-pronged strategy to meet this objective:
knock down traditional organizational boundaries; re-think technology solution sourcing;
evaluate existing cloud platforms both internally and in the marketplace. This was a complex
process. There were many internal debates on how to both prevent vendor lock-in on one and
provide a resilient cloud platform across the globe. Ultimately, AT&T identified a target state
platform that enabled a pivot from traditional proprietary solutions to an open source software-
based environment. The company chose open source project OpenStack to drive growth and
establish AT&T as an industry leader.
With OpenStack as the

base, AT&T built what it
calls the AT&T Integrated
Cloud (AIC). AIC is a
globally distributed,
private cloud that has
a single integrated code
base for both enterprise
and network workloads. AT&T realized early on that to make AIC and OpenStack successful it
needed a thoughtful approach to end-to-end architecture, innovative solutions for complex large
scale cloud operations, and to integrate AIC with various platforms in the large AT&T ecosystem.
Solving across all of these dimensions collectively has proven to be a successful formula in
making OpenStack fully operational in the AT&T ecosystem.
AT&T also recognized that to be efficient and cost effective in cloud deployments across the
globe, it needed a homogenous approach. So the company formed an internal cloud standards
body named Strategic Technical Architecture Team or “STAT”. The STAT team established
specific instance types to standardize zone infrastructure and design. A finite set of instance
types implement entire hardware and support software stacks with different performance
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profiles thoughtfully designed for different use cases. Within the cloud infrastructure, AT&T
introduced instance types for specific performance profiles to provide carrier grade capabilities,
e.g. memory intensive, high I/O, graphics intensive and more. For example, a network-optimized
performance profile was created with Single Route Input Output Virtualization (SR-IOV) that
enables multiple virtual machines (VMs) to share the same Peripheral Component Interconnect
Express (PCIe) device. This performance profile enables network traffic to bypass hypervisors
and virtual switches to achieve low latency and provide near wireline network performance.
Limiting the number of instance types and zero variance within an instance type is key to
AT&T’s homogenous approach, as the company has to replicate these instance types globally
for resiliency. This allows for internal developers and vendors to develop software and
technologies to standards. An exception process is also part of the STAT governance mechanism.
The exception process allows for updating existing instance types as appropriate and allows for
temporary exceptions. When the desired feature becomes part of a standard instance type the
exception is revoked.
AT&T has fully embraced the rapid evolution of OpenStack towards providing a full set of
capabilities for both cloud operators and developers. AT&T is committed to collaborating within
the community structure across all projects to expediently solve for large-scale operator and
service provider needs while avoiding technical debt. For instance, AT&T has contributed
deployment automation capabilities to the open source community that allow placement of
OpenStack nodes on multiple racks that span across many network segments. This capability
provides greater flexibility and scalability required for larger OpenStack deployments. AT&T
plans to upstream additional features to harden other OpenStack components such as Neutron,
the project that provides networking-as-a-service between interface devices that are managed
by other OpenStack services.
In April, 2016, AT&T was awarded the OpenStack Superuser award, which
recognizes the company that is using OpenStack to meaningfully improve
business and differentiate in a competitive industry while also contributing
back to the community.
PRINCIPLE 2: AUTOMATE, DESIGN, DEPLOY AND MANAGE AT SCALE
The size and complexity of AIC introduced unique management and operational requirements
that necessitated automation. This automation minimizes human error, allocates cloud
resources effectively and reduces manual activities and operational costs.
AT&T’s philosophy is to continually set large, audacious goals that drive teams to work
collaboratively, innovatively and accomplish what was originally thought to be impossible.
In 2015, AT&T set the challenging goal to have 69 cloud zones deployed globally by year-end.
Automation throughout the lifecycle – design, install, deploy, test and operate phases – was
needed and needed fast. For example, AT&T’s cloud infrastructure design tool automated the
design of zones. It also standardized various elements and drove re-use and reduced errors,
reducing design time by 50%. Before automating all facets of deployments, it took 10 months to
deploy 20 zones. With the introduction of automation, AT&T was able to deploy 54 AIC zones in
less than 2 months. As a result of this automation and breakthrough collaboration, AT&T
deployed 74 zones, beating the big, audacious goal of 69.
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AT&T also needed to automate other aspects of this cloud transformation. AT&T’s distributed
cloud zones provided great geographic distribution and localized control; however many
functions, like operations and tenant placement, require a singular centralized framework.
This posed a challenge. AT&T’s answer was to create the OpenStack Resource Manager (ORM)
to provide a one stop centralized resource creation, discovery and management service
platform. A good analogy for one function of ORM is a travel reservation website. Just like
a travel reservation website provides users a single place to go and enter its needs, and then
searches thousands of hotels to find the best suited room that fits the users need; ORM provides
a similar function across all AIC zones and across all the zone’s resources to find the best zone
and the best resources within the zone to place a tenant (application instance).
AT&T follows DevOps principles to deliver innovative capabilities through the automation of
operational activities. These DevOps principles foster cross-functional collaboration between
operational teams, developers, quality assurance and management teams. The principles also
build a culture and environment where building, testing, and releasing software can happen
rapidly, frequently, and more reliably. New features require operations approval to ensure
optimal operational capabilities are either present or if additional capabilities need to be added.
AT&T also realized as it progressed with its process definition that it must revisit this exact same
approval when a feature is changed.
PRINCIPLE 3: TARGET STRATEGIC IT APPLICATIONS FOR MIGRATION TO THE CLOUD
AT&T established a programmatic approach to manage the migration of applications to

the cloud. A six-phase process (Assessment, Requirements, Design, Build, Deploy, and
Decommission) is used to guide application teams through the migration process. The overall
program is managed centrally to ensure that the application migrations will be successful and
the targeted cloud platform will be able to support the diversity of application needs in the
appropriate technical space locations.
The first phase is an Assessment of the application. Applications with high growth and high
license costs are targeted for assessment first in order to reduce unit costs associated with
growth. The assessment process uses a questionnaire developed specifically for the program to
identify potential issues with migrations including the use of non-standard software that would
need to be addressed during a migration. AT&T then estimates the application migration effort.
The estimation process consists of two parts – the cost of the infrastructure and the cost of the
actual application migration effort. Applications that provide the best return on investment and
meet the longer-term strategic plan for migration are prioritized into an overall program plan.
Once funding is approved for an application, it moves to the Requirements phase. In this phase,
a dedicated team works with the application team to determine the infrastructure needs. The
teams perform a detailed review of the infrastructure the application currently resides on, and
they gather all software information required to support the application. The capacity planning
team is engaged during this phase to ensure applications are appropriately sized. The team also
ensures the application has the required disaster recovery setup needed for business continuity.
After requirements are finalized, they are handed over to a solution engineer from the
Design team. During this phase, the infrastructure solution is created. The solution engineer
is responsible for ensuring he design meets all the requirements. In addition, the solution
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engineer is responsible for reserving the cloud capacity needed to satisfy the design.
The solution engineer also looks for opportunities to optimize software licenses during
the design process. The outcome of this phase is a blueprint for the application that shows
the specifications of the infrastructure that will be created including any 3rd party software
required to support the application.
From here the migration moves into the Build phase. wherein this phase, a build engineer
creates the infrastructure for the application. Cloud orchestration has drastically improved
cycle times for this phase. The build engineer will stay engaged to ensure applications have
the support needed to finish the migration.
Once systems are built, they are turned over to application teams for them to Deploy their
application. During this phase, the application teams load and configure their application on the
new infrastructure. This is also the phase where any code modifications take place to allow the
application to run on the new platform. All application testing including unit, system, end to end
and performance takes place during the deploy phase. In addition, all systems go through a
thorough scanning process to ensure they meet all security and audit requirements before AT&T
places them into production status.
Once an application has successfully deployed to their new infrastructure, the project moves to
the Decommission phase. Here, the program validates that all workloads have moved off of the
legacy servers. Once validated, the servers are either powered down and removed from the data
center or repurposed so AT&T doesn’t have to buy new, proprietary hardware.
Throughout this six-phase process, two critical support structures ensure successful migrations,
an agile tooling team and a client support team:
A small agile tooling team was formed to develop a set of tools to allow program-level
tracking of migration efforts, as existing tooling was fragmented and manual. This tooling
team assembled data from a variety of sources allowing teams a holistic view of applications
including ownership, operating costs, existing infrastructure, and technologies used.
A client support team was created to ensure applications have a successful migration.
The team is responsible for educational resources including a newsletter, best practices
checklists and a video library on the program. They use tooling that automates
environment comparisons and validations to help identify problems before a migration
to the new platform occurs. They also collect and monitor key performance indicators pre
and post migration to ensure applications are performing as expected on the new platform.
At the end of the successful migration, AT&T has a complete picture of the environment
(pre/post migration) and full understanding of costs associated with application and
supporting environment.
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AT&T consciously decided what applications were moved to an orchestrated and

autonomous cloud platform that offers elastic and event based automation capabilities.
In some cases, AT&T found applications could not be moved to the cloud. In those cases,
AT&T moved them to dedicated servers with open source operating systems. Typically,
the primary driver for not moving to the cloud was vendor software that had yet to be
virtualized. AT&T continually assesses applications based on their ability to migrate to
the cloud.
IT Applications Migrated
80%
64%
42%
14%
2013 2014 2015 2016
PRINCIPLE 4: EXTEND THE CLOUD TO BE THE FOUNDATION OF AT&T’S SOFTWARE DEFINED

NETWORK TRANSFORMATION
The rapid advancements in communication services have resulted in numerous benefits and
even spawned many new industries. This hyperactivity, in turn, created explosive growth in
network traffic. This continued growth required a change in AT&T’s approach to build and
manage networks. AT&T defined a strategy to virtualize and cloud-enable 75% of the target
network architecture using a software-centric approach by 2020.
AT&T launched a software defined network transformation to transition from purpose-built

network appliances to open, white box commodity hardware that is virtualized and controlled
by AIC. AT&T is liberating network functions from purpose-built appliances into stand-alone
software components and managing the full lifecycle of these virtualized network functions via
AIC working in conjunction with both global and local software controllers.
Taking this approach prevents vendor lock in and allows AT&T to have an open, flexible and
modular architecture that serves the business purposes of scaling to meet the explosive demand
at lower cost, increasing speed of feature delivery, and providing much greater agility. By
separating the hardware from the software, AT&T can rapidly make changes to the platform
and can extend real time management of the service to the customer through digital portals,
such as AT&T’s Dedicated Managed Internet Service On-Demand bandwidth adjustments.
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Software defined networking also provides the capability to service chain multiple virtual
components across services. For example, AT&T can now combine load balancing with
security products into a single service. AT&T also created ECOMP (Enhanced Control
Orchestration Management and Policy) to provide a design time and execution time
framework that tightly integrates all AT&T systems with AIC to improve the customer
experience. A whitepaper on AT&T’s innovation blog illustrates the overall context for how
the ECOMP platform operates within the AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC) infrastructure. True
to AT&T’s commitment to open source, AT&T recently committed to contribute ECOMP
software to the Linux foundation and has invited others in the communications industry
to collaborate within the community framework.
AT&T’s software defined network transformation provides key lessons for the successful
deployment of a private cloud. These experiences can be applied to any private cloud
deployment to generate benefits that are critical for any business or industry.
KEY BENEFITS
Advancements in cloud infrastructure technology have delivered significant benefits -- cost

savings, agility provided by the cloud to scale out and scale in, chaining services and using robust
APIs while identifying new opportunities for top line growth. As workloads are migrated to a
modern autonomous cloud platform, AT&T has realized incremental benefits as summarized in
the figure below. AT&T has found that when applications are migrated to orchestrated cloud
platforms, CPU efficiency reaches up to 85%. Additionally, AT&T has seen an average of a 36%
improvement in performance for applications that have been migrated to the cloud.
Realized Benefits of Moving to:
AT&T has also reduced hardware and software license counts, and standardized on a set of open
source software to reduce operating costs. The program has also allowed AT&T to re-use both
software and hardware assets for capacity needs on applications that may not be migrating to
the cloud, further reducing both capital and expense.
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Additional benefits of our Cloud Transformation include improved reliability due to the
distributed software-controlled infrastructure and re-think of application architecture to
take full advantage of cloud. Applications and orchestration systems have become more
micro-services-based. Different services can be placed closer to the consuming end point thus
improving performance. Micro-services also create more resilient architecture as they are easier
to replicate in cloud zones and re-direct traffic in the event of failures. AT&T found that a critical
element to achieve the above benefits is training the organization on cloud native principles.
Building Platforms for the Future

Extending the cloud to be the foundation of AT&T’s software defined network transformation
is a significant step towards the goal of virtualizing 75% of the target network architecture by
2020. In order to solidify and enhance the platform foundation for the future, AT&T operated
with the following objectives:
Enable the delivery of feature-rich customer centric communication platforms

Provide the means for mission critical business functions to operate
24x7x365 at high availability
Decrease time to market and improve quality for AT&T's industry
leading products and services
Allow for a secure and reliable cloud ecosystem by adopting a “Resilient by Design”
philosophy in development and operations
Create a best in class industry cost structure
These objectives defined a set of key principles for AT&T’s platform development:
1. Reinventing the Network with Software

2. Transforming the Business with the API Platform
3. Building and Securing the Cloud Ecosystem
1. REINVENTING THE NETWORK WITH SOFTWARE
The data world is surging ahead. Today there are an estimated 3.2 billion internet Users
producing network traffic every second, every minute, and every day of the year.
As a result, AT&T’s mobile data traffic increased 150,000% over the past 7 years. By 2017, with
60% of the total network traffic being video. More than 118 petabytes of data traverse AT&T’s
network every day, equivalent to more than 130 million hours of HD video. It’s estimated that,
industry-wide, data traffic will grow another 10 fold by 2020,. Approximately 6.4 billion
connected things will be in use worldwide this year – up 30% from 2015. By 2017, there will
be three times more connected devices than people on earth, accelerating the data demands
on AT&T’s network.
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AT&T is directly in the middle of this explosive growth, and leading the way. The company has
always been aware of the connection between the network and its customers. To meet the
exponential network data growth driven by its customers, and to introduce new services faster,
requires taking a revolutionary approach to delivering network services. For decades, industries
have depended on “Moore’s Law” in hardware advances to keep up with growth. The reality is
hardware advances and Moore’s Law are no longer able to keep up with network demands from
both a growth and economics perspective. So software is the only answer if traditional network
hardware is no longer the solution.
The economics to support this growth trajectory and cost dynamics showed AT&T that it had to
transform its approach to building networks. This involves transitioning from using specialized
and purpose-built physical network hardware devices, to a network that is software-enabled
on commodity, general-purpose compute hardware. AT&T is leading the industry with the
transformation toward a software-centric network. The company can deliver new services faster
and give customers better control of these services. Customers can activate and manage their
services to fit their needs at any point in time through software, and the network responds to
customers’ needs in near real time. For example, AT&T’s Network on Demand platform enables
customers to add or change network services as needed, easily customize network topologies,
and dial up or down broadband speeds to align with their business needs quickly.
By liberating the network functions from proprietary physical hardware constraints, AT&T is
opening up an entirely new world of opportunities, all based on software and APIs. Now instead
of limitations imposed by physical boundaries, AT&T can integrate different software-based
network components together in new and interesting ways, with flexibility and speed that was
not possible before. No longer is AT&T constrained to deploying multiple special-purpose
network appliances to deliver network services to customers, which often required physical site
installations for each network service. Now AT&T can deliver a common Universal Customer
Premise Equipment (uCPE) to customers, and deploy the network services they desire when they
desire via software, all under customer control. By evolving away from special purpose network
appliances to general-purpose compute based hardware, AT&T is able to leverage the multi-
tenancy capabilities this empowers to drive up use of the compute assets and deliver improved
value to customers through software.
This software is based on AT&T intellectual property, 3rd party collaborator contributions,
and open source software. AT&T’s active engagement in the open source communities enables
the company to innovate and deliver new capabilities faster, and lead the industry ecosystem
forward to the benefit of customers. By being active in the open source communities, AT&T
is encouraging and promoting the acceleration of interoperable standards, growing the overall
ecosystem through broader exposure to developers globally, and clearly demonstrating the
company’s commitment to both customers and collaborators to drive innovation as a change
agent in a software-defined economy.
This has all resulted in the emergence of VNFs (Virtualized Network Functions), developed
by AT&T and AT&T’s third-party collaborators. Since VNFs are software-based, they can be
easily and quickly deployed when and where needed. Capacity can be scaled up and down.
No longer are customers required to have disparate specialized hardware devices from
different companies to deploy and run network functions such as Edge Routers, Firewalls,
WAN Accelerators, Wireless LANs, E-Mail Security, or DDOS protection. Through VNFs, these
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capabilities are enabled within AT&T’s cloud and on a customer’s premises. Multiple proprietary
devices can be replaced with one common uCPE box based on standard commodity hardware.
This makes it much easier to switch VNF providers or adopt newer VNFs with enhanced features.
The power of VNFs and the power of multiple software enabled functions on a single device
results in less complexity, lower cost, and higher agility.
As with traditional hardware-based network functions, VNFs must still be deployed and
managed. As mentioned in the cloud discussion, this is where AT&T’s unique ECOMP platform
comes into the picture. With ECOMP, service delivery, service assurance, and performance and
fault management of the VNFs are automated through intelligent software-based orchestrations
using APIs and integrations with cloud management capabilities such as OpenStack.
Software is enabling AT&T to deliver additional feature-rich customer centric platforms

such as Connected Car, Digital Life, Smart Cities, and Healthcare with speed and agility
not possible previously.
2. TRANSFORMING THE BUSINESS WITH THE API PLATFORM
Today, Application Programming Interfaces or APIs are a widely adopted technology. Combined
with cloud technology, APIs are driving the latest trend called micro-services. In many ways,
AT&T has been ahead of the industry by developing micro-services exposed via APIs on its API
platform well before both became industry trends. Micro-services embrace small, independent,
and self-contained business functions exposed via APIs, as opposed to large, enterprise-level
managed processes. Micro-services can also be developed and deployed independently. These
abilities, among others, help AT&T meet its platform objectives, which include the following:
Provide the means for mission critical business functions to operate

24x7x365 at high availability
Drive down total cost of ownership by institutionalizing reuse of software
assets and business processes across the organization
Decrease time to market and improve the quality of AT&T's industry
leading products and services
Provide fast transactions and scalability on demand
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The API platform adopted four principles to guide its design:
AT&T’s API Platform Design Principles
Design for Growth Maximize Reuse Standardization & Adoption Constantly Evolving Platform
A. Design for Growth
At AT&T, the API Platform had an advantage: previous, significant advances in the space of
middleware. AT&T experienced a wave of mergers from 2003 to 2008. As referred to in the
Application Rationalization section, at one time AT&T had 6,000+ applications with numerous,
redundant interfaces and infrastructure. The technology rationalization of interfaces and the
associated technologies was essential for AT&T’s transformation to a software-based company.
In addition, AT&T recognized early on that it also had to create platforms and, in essence, turn
AT&T into a platform company. Platforms provide a singular set of assets to perform design,
development, hosting, and operation functions. Developing an API platform was essential.
The platform also needed to be extensible i.e. easily support new lines of business or new
technologies as they arose and be agile. AT&T has worked over many years to develop a
feature-rich best-in-class extensible API platform which has supported the changing and
fast-paced demands of the business.
The underlying building blocks for the platform are frameworks. Modularity of frameworks
allows them to support discrete functions, and that focus allows for extreme adaptability.
Frameworks are the building blocks for the platform. Frameworks allow discrete functions to
change fast and support independent deployment. The platform allows all business functions
and applications to take advantage of the changes immediately. This approach paved the way
for exponential growth. Additionally, for complex business and technology functions where
there are few subject matter experts, the frameworks and platform approach allows the
encapsulation of that expertise and its usage uniformly at scale.
AT&T’s API platform journey truly scaled up in 2011 when the company laid out its vision for
accelerating and more efficiently developing new products and services with a technology-
centric approach. The API platform was one of the key technology initiatives. In 2011, AT&T
had 57 billion API transactions per year serving 232 clients. By mid-2016, transactions grew
approximately 150% to 141 billion per year with 585 clients. Clients are both internal (sales,
ordering, service delivery, service assurance, billing, cloud and software defined networking
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applications) and external (retailers such as Walmart, Apple and Best Buy, connected car
manufacturers, and third-party application developers). The graph below shows the rapid
growth of yearly API calls to the platform. AT&T’s goal is to reach over one trillion API
transactions annually by 2020.
Transactions per Year

all transactions in billions 190
136
9
72
57
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
B. Maximize Reuse
APIs have rapidly become the common language of integration by facilitating the sharing of
content and data between applications at unprecedented levels. APIs do this by making data
and services easily accessible by serving as translators that applications can simply “plug into.”
This opens the door for internal organizations, third-party companies, and external application
developers to reuse existing AT&T capabilities instead of recreating them. That’s the true power
of APIs: re-use. In fact, in 2015 AT&T reused 2,141 APIs for meeting new AT&T business needs,
while reducing cycle time and delivery cost at the same time. While the power of APIs is reuse
of business functions, the power of the API Platform is the reuse of technology frameworks and
common structures to enable very low cost yet consistent development of APIs. Additionally,
the platform lowers the energy barrier for delivery and business teams alike, and delivers best
in class distributed business computing that contains the following components:
Design and development tooling – A model-driven development framework generates code

automatically and makes it easier to on-board programmers while providing consistently
high quality code delivery.
World-class runtime security – AT&T’s Chief Security Office (CSO) teams are domain experts
in the ever changing world of security. CSO specifies security needs to protect the business
that are implemented quickly in the platform via frameworks. Everything from distributed
denial of service defense to encrypting sensitive data at movement and at rest. Security is
complex domain and there are too-few security experts. AT&T is able to leverage the
expertise of a few and apply it at scale by providing platform-based services to the
technology ecosystem.
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) – A services delivery tooling
framework was developed that helps deploy numerous changes rapidly and in a controlled
manner to avoid operational risk.
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Metrics, monitoring and alerting – These functions are integrated into the design and
development tooling and feed directly into the AT&T DevOps infrastructure, providing
consistent, real-time and actionable insight into the distributed business processes.
Micro Service architecture and DME discovery (Direct Messaging Engine) – An AT&T
innovation that allows each of the API platform clients to independently discover the APIs
it needs and optimizes the transaction flow. If there is a client and at least one working API
instance anywhere on the network, the request will get served and the net result is high
availability and low total cost of ownership
Backwards compatibility support via Versioning – The platform keeps multiple versions of
an API, saving clients from incurring the cost of absorbing every update to APIs they
consume. This platform also provides clients planning flexibility for upgrades, allowing them
to focus on business demands instead.
DevOps multi-tier support 24x7x365 – The APIs from hundreds of application teams join a
continuously operating micro–service environment. DevOps provides real time support from
build, QC Testing, performance testing, and production environment support, to triage of
backend and data availability.
API Developer Training – Training and stakeholdering in terms of business
value created, as well as recognition of application team successes when they
use the platform.
Client onboarding and documentation – Beyond technology changes, the API
Transformation creates a “Marketplace” for business services. Like a stock offered in a stock
market, APIs thrive and grow when clients choose to consume them. Client onboarding is
the platform’s marketplace.
C. Standardization and Adoption
A platform built, yet not fully leveraged, cannot deliver the business benefits needed. A key
dimension to the API platform’s success was ubiquitous adoption. AT&T implemented, via the
centralized solution architecture team, an architecture policy that directed all development
of data exchange between applications to the platform. Very few exceptions were granted
and required many approvals. This also required the architects to develop the end-to-end
solutions fundamentally differently and embrace new technologies. However, having an API
Architecture policy was just one requirement for ubiquitous adoption: there was still a cultural
problem to tackle.
Training all IT and technology team members on the value of the API platform, their crucial role
in supporting it – combined with making 200+ application teams themselves part of the platform
team – took center stage. AT&T made every IT team a stakeholder in the API platform’s success.
AT&T uses the term “Federated API Developer Program” to establish a new ownership of the
platform for the application teams and firmly respect their continued ownership of the
application and related domain expertise. This was combined with incentivizing teams and
celebrating their success in leveraging the platform.
The Federated API Developer Program empowers developers across the AT&T technology
community to build and deploy new APIs on the platform. This not only eliminates the
dependency on a centralized development team but also drives up API re-use. Every API built
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at AT&T is contributed to the discoverable AT&T API repository. Since the federated program’s
inception, over 100 technology teams have been certified to build APIs on the common
platform and have created over 500 new APIs which are contributed to the API catalog for
all AT&T applications to re-use. With a structured training program and a centralized support
team, teams build on the platform. AT&T has developed role-based training to empower the
technology teams to train and earn certification. Standardized tools, technologies and process
methodologies help simplify complexity. A centralized design and support team provides
governance, common design elements like a centralized data model, frameworks, and delivery
assurance based on the trainees’ level of experience.
Gradually, attracting application teams to the platform became easier. As the domain expertise
of application teams was respected, the domain expertise of platform providers (like Security,
Discovery, DevOps, Metrics and Dashboards) became easier to digest. The API Platform was
driving resiliency and scalability, availability, geographic redundancy over multiple data centers,
geographic affinity for performance, proactive monitoring and alerting.
At this point, federated teams welcome the ready solutions and tooling, which allows the teams
to remain focused on the important business functions they deliver.
D. Design the platform to evolve
The risk of a standardized and shared platform is inflexibility when innovation is needed.
Creation of the platform was matched with a RAVE process for rapid experimentation and an
expanded standards exception process because "Innovation violates existing standards.” The
platform is never static. Its future depends on incorporating the best innovations and learning
from the rest. This platform gives AT&T a recurring target of investment that delivers best–in-
class capabilities and ensures that investment pays dividends.
AT&T continues to evolve and mature the API Platform by increasing adaptability, promoting
self-service and reducing cost as more clients and partners onboard. Through continued
investment in the re-usable frameworks and an enhanced federated developer experience, users
are able to reap the benefits of lower cost and shortened delivery cycles in delivering strategic
products and services.
As AT&T focuses on its great people and continues to evolve their skills for 2020, practitioners
across the other AT&T organizations will be trained on the importance of the API platform for
integrating products and businesses.
API Platform Benefits
To summarize, the benefits the API Platform brings to AT&T are lower costs, and rapid delivery
of business functions via reusable infrastructure. The goal is for teams to re-use an API, thus
saving 70-80% of the development cost for AT&T business clients. If full re-use is not an option,
the team can re-use an API with modifications or even create a new one if needed, but still be
able to reuse common functions like logging and security resulting in 25-45% savings. In the
diagram below, the traditional approach would have required 35 total point-to-point
integrations. With the API platform, there are only seven back-end integration points and a
single standard API for front-end consumption, greatly reducing cost and increasing speed.
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Below are the technology benefits resulting from the platform:
Adaptation to a wild west of backend systems: Once a backend has been accessed by any
API on the platform, all future APIs can leverage the now-encapsulated access to the
backend called an adaptor. This saves future teams the costly SDLC lifecycle and ensures
pitfalls are not rediscovered. For speed-critical business processes, the API Platform and
Data Platforms combined to offer Operationalized Data as a Service. The platforms have
reusable tools and processes to extract data from slower backend systems in advance and
place it in AT&T’s forward-positioned high speed API data fabric.
Normalized Common Data Model: The myriad of point-to-point interfaces on the left side of
the diagram were developed at different times, often in different companies prior to
mergers, and usually designed without wide reuse in mind. The platform delivers interface
and technology normalization consistent with best-in-class middleware. In addition, it
creates a point to plan AT&T enterprise interfaces,
uses a common data model, and applies highly automated governance to insure compliance.
These elements were not easily accomplished before the platform.
Below are savings resulting from a highly reused single platform API (Inquire Account Profile)
as an example:
Reused 173 times
Processes more than 102M transactions per month
Average 93% SDLC savings per API reuse
All business units experience benefits of the platform approach. The API platform has
been a significant enabler in AT&T’s journey towards becoming a software and platform
company. AT&T’s customers, products, services operations and internal teams have been
provided significant cycle time, cost reduction and business agility capabilities as a result
of the API platform.
3. BUILDING AND SECURING THE CLOUD ECOSYSTEM
Today’s constantly evolving cyber threat landscape demands a relentless focus on security.
Almost every day there is a headline in the media regarding some level of cyber intrusion,
compromise, data theft or new type of attack. This is an area where AT&T has focused for
many years in helping to protect the company, its customers and the country. The company
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has implemented multilayered defenses in its traditional data networks and is leading the
way in advancing virtualized security with its Universal Security Services Platform.
These layers of defense start with comprehensive identity and access management that uses
strong multifactor user credentials, biometric information, and a user’s mobile device as an
effortless way to protect infrastructure, systems and applications.
Running in the cloud to protect the cloud, the ASTRA system enables virtual security services
to be delivered to cloud environments by enabling automated intelligent provisioning
and creating micro-perimeters around specific systems and services based on application
requirements. The ASTRA project uses internally developed software along with open source
and vendor solutions to create a security architecture that provides protection to AT&T’s
enterprise cloud environments.
ASTRA’s ecosystem enables this dynamic security protection for all computing
resources by providing:
Automatic orchestration of micro perimeter security protection “rings”

for individual virtual machines as part of the provisioning process
Automatic orchestration of security protection for groups of virtual assets
that make up a project
Ongoing security policy provisioning to the virtual machines, project groups as well
as classic perimeter protection systems using application programming interfaces
Security event collection and forwarding to authorized subscriber system
User interface support for security administrators
ASTRA Platform Feature
ASTRA implements these functions using a botlike self-healing architecture that was designed
from the start to use API services. Astra was also designed to be an open and flexible system
that supports integration with commercial security technologies and other third party solution
integrators. ASTRA’s use of APIs enable a way to standardize communications and controls for
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security system components as well as seamless integration with external business system like
asset inventory, threat management and record retention services.
ASTRA leverages Software Defined Networking (SDN) to enable cloud or physical data center
security protections. It also takes advantage of the new technology capabilities available in
OpenStack and other cloud integration environments and provides north-south and east-west
protections for the cloud. Security Function Virtualization (SFV) is the hallmark of ASTRA. SFV is
a key enabler for ASTRA to facilitate dynamic and intelligent security protections required by the
workload in a cost effective and right sized manner. SFV also enables ASTRA to take advantage
of new and leading edge security technologies.
The functional ASTRA architecture is depicted in Figure ASTRA Functional Architecture. The
ASTRA architecture can be broken down into multiple layers that can be generally considered
ASTRA Core and ASTRA Satellite.
Functional ASTRA Architecture
The ASTRA Core environment is an integrated platform purposely architected to provide a rich
set of command and control systems to manage enterprise and carrier sized cloud-computing
environments. The ASTRA Core platform provides mission critical capabilities needed to
effectively manage cloud-based security, including:
Intelligent creation of security policies and controls

Auditing of security policies
Acquiring and maintaining cloud object inventory
Orchestrating the dynamic implementation of security policies
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Acquiring and managing massive volumes of security event logs

Providing instant notification services to authorized administrators and system owners
ASTRA Core presents these functions using a comprehensive user interface portal. ASTRA Core
also seamlessly interoperates with other key management systems such as Operations Support
Systems (OSS), Business Intelligence (BI) systems, ECOMP, Identity and Access Management
(IDAM), and Threat Analytics systems that have been discussed in prior sections.
ASTRA Satellites provide the ability for ASTRA to manage and control the security protection
of distributed cloud environments. Lightweight ASTRA Satellites work with ASTRA Core to
provide a complete set of command and control functions and telemetry services that ensures
effective security management. These functions and services include distributed security
event collection and managing the distribution of event data to authorized subscribers. ASTRA
Satellites can be extended to implement any service that is required to be run in the distributed
cloud environment.
One of the keys to the effectiveness of the overall ASTRA architecture is that it uses APIs to
enable an open and effective integration strategy. The use of Agile development techniques with
a continuous integration model provides dynamic and responsive software delivery capability to
support new feature and function introduction. The next section will explore the multifaceted
and multilayered security protection capabilities provided by ASTRA.
The finest grain security control is to establish intelligent micro security protections right on
top of (or around) each computing resource. Conceptually think of these measures as “a ring
around” each resource – with the protections specifically required for that resource. These micro
perimeters are automatically provisioned when the resource is created and carry the necessary
policy controls for the work that that resource provides. This “workload” policy management is
established as part of the provisioning process and is maintained through ongoing API based
orchestration to meet the changing need of the workload.
These micro perimeters are implemented as Security Function Virtualization (SFV) objects. SFV
differs from traditional security systems in that they are implemented as “software only” and are
attached to the workload using SDN techniques.
This level of control provides protection for what was previously the “soft gooey center” of both
cloud and physical iron enterprise environments. These protections close that soft center by
providing east-west protections between VM's that previously didn't exist. The next security
ring extends that protection to the collection of VM's that make up a project.
To extend the security protection technologies beyond the individual workload objects, the
ASTRA security construct also provides additional layers of protection through the provisioning
and orchestration of tenant level or project level protections. Think of a tenant as a logical
grouping of workload objects (VMs) into a workgroup cluster. This workgroup or logical tenant
grouping is not bound by physical networking and can be geographically distributed.
By provisioning and orchestrating a higher-level policy to the workgroup, an additional

protection ring is available to shield the entire tenant group. The workgroup perimeter works
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in conjunction with the micro-perimeter protection while enabling alternative protection

technologies and policies to be provisioned that protect the entire workgroup.
The workgroup protection model extends the access controls directly applied to the
individual workload object and allows for policy controls that can protect the external access
to all logical objects in the workgroup independent of the location of the objects. This extends
the east-west protections as well as providing a stronger higher-level protection for north-
south protection for the entire workgroup. The workgroup protections enable policy controls
that are not as effectively implemented at the workload object level. The next security ring
completes the protection model by adding classic perimeter protections such as firewalls,
IPS and other devices.
And when trouble occurs, the Threat Analytics platform uses event data from ASTRA and
other security and networking systems to quickly detect and characterize many types of attacks,
providing valuable information that can help mitigate attacks before they become a widespread
problem, by leveraging Big Data systems and the expertise of AT&T analysts. AT&T is moving
beyond protection into prediction through its advanced threat analytics capabilities and offering
managed security services to its customers.
Threat Intellect is not just a platform or suite of services for AT&T customers. It’s a foundation
built on people, processes, products and tools. It uses advanced analytics to identify abnormal
activity, perform massive data intelligence on threat signatures, deploy proactive policies against
emerging threats, and perform machine learning on the 5 billion vulnerability scans and 200,000
malware events targeted at AT&T every day.
These leading edge systems are critical for protecting AT&T’s infrastructure, network, systems
and people from attack. But there is still more that an effective technology organization needs
to do. It has become AT&T’s strategy to embed security and resiliency into the designs of each
and every one of its software platforms, infrastructure and operations.
When creating or updating a system or environment in the technology development

organization, AT&T has traditionally focused on critical items like "availability and recovery"
and "how the application should work.” Given this new threat landscape, it’s important to add
to this thought process the concepts of "how can I secure this application from a malicious
entity", and "how can I make this platform more resilient to attacks and outages". When
asking these questions, and including them in development and operations, the developers
and engineers make the "Resiliency by Design" philosophy comes to life. Resiliency and security
by design are critical components to be "baked in" to AT&T’s business systems, starting at the
design phase and continuing through the development and operations phases. This enables
AT&T to deliver even more secure and robust software, with higher quality, and a lower cost
over the lifecycle of an application.
To align the organization to this critical initiative, the Technology Development organization
launched a formal education program to help the team begin to embed resiliency and security
by design into all of its work programs as a Maturity Model for Resiliency. Over 100 software
projects will use the new resiliency by design principles in 2016, including testing and validation.
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Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer Experience

– Realizing Digital First
Digital first is about extending the edge of the company across every aspect of the customer
lifecycle, from identification, to acquisition, and through service and support; and doing this in
a way that connects customers to the company well beyond the transactional level. AT&T knows
that when it delivers compelling digital experiences, it connects customers with AT&T’s brand
promise. The evolution of digital has moved far beyond ecommerce and self-service paths of
yesterday. Now every business can be a digital business, and nearly every customer interaction
has the potential to be a digital interaction with the customer in control. Tapping into this
connected ecosystem opens up the opportunity to create new business designs by blurring
the lines between the digital and physical worlds. These new designs evolve when companies
think differently about products and services. The digital evolution will have as much impact on
human channels as it will on AT&T’s online experience.
Expanding both the breadth and depth of AT&T’s digital capabilities is the core of enabling the
“smart integrated experience” for customers. Digital is no longer just a channel. Digital now
provides a landscape of unprecedented communications – connected customers, employees
and devices – providing new levels of empowerment. Capitalizing on this evolution means
engaging in self-disruption and providing a truly omni-channel experience with digital at its
core, encompassing all products and services, across all segments of customers. Ultimately,
the digital experience becomes the primary interface customers have with AT&T – a seamless,
intuitive digital experience that facilitates the entirety of their relationship with AT&T.
AT&T elevated the Digital First strategy to one of the Strategic Imperatives for the corporation in
2013, setting an aggressive goal of reaching 80% Digital by 2020. So how does the company get
there? Simply put, meet customers in the digital channels they increasingly prefer and provide
an intuitive experience. AT&T is accomplishing this through a straightforward plan:
Be both Digital First and Mobile First by design – When designing for digital and mobile
first, the result is the most simple, streamlined experience possible. Current efforts to move
AT&T to a Responsive Web Design (RWD) platform while maximizing development reuse will
allow the optimal digital experience for the device the customer prefers, be it a full-browser
on a PC, a tablet, or a mobile phone.
Provide a common, intuitive, personalized and secure experience across digital channels –
Doing so aligns the service strategy with the product strategy. AT&T’s product strategy for
Network on Demand and the Software Defined Network offerings are predicated on
providing simple, intuitive customer control.
Expand data-driven personalization across the channel – Bringing the customers’ stated
preferences and observed and captured behaviors to bear in creating a smart customer
experience is critical to AT&T’s success in digital. Customers’ preferences are in a constant
state of evolution, with ever-increasing expectations and a growing focus on personalization.
Previously, for example, marketing selected one topic each month to email to all wireless
customers. Now “next customer action” propensity models choose which of 10 emails a
customer might get – topics like how to travel overseas, how to pick the best data plan, how
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to pay online. The messages anticipate the individual customer’s likely needs, pleasing the
customer and reducing calls into call centers.
Drive greater awareness, adoption, and engagement of digital capabilities – As AT&T
continues to evolve digital experiences, it also ensures customers are aware of the available
tools. Having great digital capabilities provides no value to customers or AT&T if the
customers do not use them. The company relies on human channels such as customer
service and company-owned retail stores to introduce the AT&T mobile application to
customers and demonstrate how easy it is to use.
Deliver a predictive frictionless sales and service experience – Constant research, testing,
and innovation are key to refining and improving the customer experience in the digital
channel. “Frictionless” does not come easy. AT&T has invested in human factors research,
built usability and experience labs, conducted A/B variant testing, installed clickstream
analysis tools, and built a resilient platform. All of these come together to create that
frictionless experience.
The impact of this strategy has been significant to AT&T’s business. Currently, 87% of AT&T
consumers have registered to use myAT&T, the marquee digital experience. Furthermore, 49%
use it on a monthly basis. Couple that with the lowest average transaction time and the highest
Net Promoter Score across all of AT&T’s channels, it is easy to see the value to customers and
AT&T. Digital has also had a significant impact on the operational cost of the business. Efforts to
shift customer transactions to digital moved a significant volume of transactions in 2015. The
figure below shows the growth in customers’ digital adoption since the program started in 2012.
As the number of digital interactions increase, AT&T has experienced a reduction in calls to AT&T
care centers, a reduction in visits to retail stores, and an increase in year over year digital
transactions, all while providing a preferred customer experience. That has resulted in a cost
savings of $223m in 2015 alone. AT&T forecasts billions in additional savings as capabilities are
continually added to the digital platforms.
Digital Adoption
76.3% 80.0%
38.0%
2012 2015 2020

'2020 Projection
On the Enterprise side, the opportunity to expand digital is similar in many respects, but the
tactics are different. To that end, AT&T is embracing the needs of customers and making rapid
changes in the digital space for business customers. AT&T’s mission here is to deliver a customer
experience that empowers its business customers to intuitively explore, purchase, administer,
and support scalable, best-in-class, integrated global solutions tailored to provide value with
Page 32
maximum adaptability. AT&T will accomplish this by enabling Business Center, as a “Single Pane
of Glass,” providing effortless access and navigation, common registration and identity
management, and an integrated inventory. Enterprise customers want more control and
flexibility to dynamically manage their services.
AT&T’s Digital First strategy will continue to evolve along with the customers’ expectations
and digital capabilities. Just as AT&T transitioned from reactive to proactive consumer
experiences, they will leverage the increasing capabilities with Big Data-powered personalization
to transition from reactive to predictive enterprise customer experiences. Consumers are
already experiencing this type of predictive experience when they are offered a new simplified
mobility rate plan, which was tailored to them based on their current consumption habits,
and presented at the time they are most likely ready to act on the offer. The benefits AT&T has
already seen in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency more than pay for the
investments the company has made, and will continue to make, in the digital realm. The
challenge is simply keeping ahead of customer expectations.
Building a Big Data Platform and Becoming a Data Driven Business

AT&T is shifting from a world of appliance-driven, hardware-coded systems and processes
to a world driven by software and data. The company is matching its skillset to this new
environment. It’s the biggest technology and people transformation attempted by a global
corporation of this size. And while the road to becoming a truly data-driven enterprise
has potholes, there’s good news. AT&T is proving that a business can get on this road and
motor through three critical phases if it stays focused: Building a capability. Proving value.
Scaling the benefits.
Speed and relevance are critical for all businesses. You can definitely be quick when you’re small,
because you’re probably not facing the same complexities. You can also be fast when you’re big
like AT&T. But if you steam off in the wrong direction, you’re in big trouble. Major corporations
often float in place because of this. They cannot agree internally on what to do next – “analysis
paralysis” – while nimble new firms are working to sink them. These large firms have a new tool,
however, that actually leverages their scale for speed. It’s Big Data.
Software paired with data analytics is the answer for AT&T. Not everyone was a true believer
at AT&T when it began its internal Big Data Center of Excellence in 2013. It was obvious that
a large, complicated enterprise – with 100,000 servers of disparate business data – would
benefit from better organizing the petabytes to create new insights. But the skeptics had
a point. “Big Data” has enjoyed quite a bit of hype.
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Four foundational blocks were critical for AT&T’s Big Data organization:
Customer Privacy: Garnering trust is a result of prioritizing. Placing customer privacy first is
a fundamental commitment by putting customer protection at the forefront of all business
and technology conversations. As business opportunities and new technologies arise, the
commitment must stand. Sharing this commitment with the customer is just as important –
they want to feel empowered, not threatened.
Getting to this place requires the first perspective that data is an asset worth
protecting, managing, and using it to AT&T customers’ satisfaction. AT&T’s core
beliefs around privacy include:
Customer trust is foundational to the success of Big Data
Trust is gained through fierce protection of our customers’ privacy coupled
with transparency and control
A strong privacy and data governance program is not just a compliance
obligation but more importantly a business enabler
Driving a culture to value data as an asset is a critical first step
Process: Collaboration is key for working with Big Data. Without it, there is no success. Big
Data at AT&T can deliver incredible insights, but must do so in collaboration with its internal
business unit teams. Big Data works with a business unit on use cases, like those mentioned
below, as data-informed projects.
After a project is identified, the business unit identifies the relevant data sources and
makes the data accessible. Big Data then acquires and analyzes the data, leading to
explanatory and predictive models and explaining the insights that arise from those
models. The business unit team takes action as a result of the analysis. AT&T is bridging
any gaps between technology and business and keeping relevant stake holders at the
table from the beginning.
Technology Platform: Moving from a system-centric culture to a data-driven culture
requires new thinking in technology and security including platforms, privacy, compliance,
tools, scale, design, and data availability. At AT&T, a cross-discipline team created a Big Data
reference architecture that can scale to our size and also be flexible enough to support
multiple use cases concurrently. AT&T designed this architecture from the start with security
and privacy in mind, building platforms to provide consent management, encryption,
stringent access security, and auditability while allowing us to anonymize and aggregate
data for broader analysis. AT&T approached the challenge of delivering a new platform by
first identifying capabilities required to meet our business needs. Discussions concerning
specific technologies were allowed only in the context of fulfilling a need for one or more
capabilities. Existing technologies were evaluated and selected where possible. In some
cases the technologies did not exist to meet AT&T’s capability needs. New technologies
for data movement to promote reuse (Data Router) and near real-time data availability
(Message Router) were built in-house to support easy data sharing so new insights can be
brought to market quickly. In total AT&T has implemented 168 capabilities in support of
its Big Data strategy. In order to more easy communicate the mapping of capabilities to
technologies AT&T created a periodic table mapping work to be done to technologies and
capabilities to support the work. Using the periodic table teams can quickly associate
technologies and the supported capabilities to meet their needs. Building on these
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capabilities, AT&T has grown from two petabytes in Hadoop lakes to 20 petabytes in 1.5
years. Scaling beyond that is very efficient due to modular data center design principles that
are effectively plug-and-play. And with the speed of Big Data tool advancement, a pipeline
of new features is constantly available to support new and innovative use cases.
Training: To act on the Big Data opportunity, AT&T needed to conduct a skills pivot by
equipping its people with new talents and perspectives. Big Data can only take place with a
blend of data science talent and subject matter expertise. Though critical for success, a data
scientist is not all that’s needed. You need expertise across a spectrum from developers to
business leaders, domain experts, communications, data wranglers and more.
Deep computer and data science knowledge, and the ability to translate these topics into
everyday speech, require specialized training and experience. Toward that end, a virtualized
Big Data Boot camp and other in-person and online resources were jointly developed to
equip AT&T employees with relevant skills. AT&T also has advanced courses through its
partnership with Udacity and outreach to America’s brightest college students to give them
exposure to Big Data, invaluable experience, and the opportunity to contribute to AT&T’s
continued success.
In 2016, AT&T has already achieved considerable advantages from its investment. This means
better decision-making, continuous innovation, and better customer service. AT&T’s Data Grid
is supporting more than 12 billion transactions monthly from hundreds of strategic business
applications. The Data Grid is a data technology which, in advance, aggregates data from
multiple back-end systems, transforms the data into consumable objects and distributes it
to multiple locations for the purpose of redundancy and proximity. Thus when any business
application in need of data makes an API call, the data is provided at extreme speed enabling
high performance, is always available due to geo-redundant architecture and also shields the
applications from back-end system outages as data was pre-fetched. The net result is much
higher availability and performance for our end customers and for technology teams the ability
to implement changes faster in the Data Grid without waiting on back-end release cycles.
The dramatic results of AT&T’s evolution has led to the creation of the term “Hyper
Automation.” Hyper Automation is defined as the use of big data analytics and machine learning
to automate the tasks of analysis and recommendation allowing our systems and employees
to execute the next best action.
AT&T has been a typical enterprise running on applications, and applications produce data that
tend to reside within the application. When AT&T surveyed all the data across their applications,
70 million columns of data were found. That’s columns, not rows. And this was the most
interesting insight: Only a small percentage of those columns were actually unique.
That isn’t easy to rectify. The same data might have multiple methods of time-stamping,
depending on the application. It might have multiple ways of storing a name or date. After
all, the data warehouses in every business are built in association with unique applications.
That must change at AT&T and elsewhere. The successful 21st century enterprise will be
data-centric, not application-centric. It will gain new insights without struggling to “get the
data,” and at the same time it will be able to secure and control its internal data ecosystem
more effectively.
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Here are just a few of AT&T’s data-informed projects, in various stages, from proof-of-concept
to full production.
AT&T is tracking 53 metrics on its landline network to discover historical clues that reveal
when a cable is about to cause trouble. By using predictive analytics to send crews out
proactively rather than reactively, a pilot program showed a 40 percent reduction in total
repair dispatches. As the program expanded, in the first half of 2016, AT&T completed more
than 1,100 rehabilitation jobs based on the predictive method – before the customer
experience was affected.
AT&T is using telematics from the trucks, historical repair records, and even local weather
data to predict when vehicle batteries are about to quit – before they do. AT&T’s model is
84 percent accurate. So far, the Fleet Operations team has preemptively replaced more than
11,000 batteries based on these predictions, avoiding over $1.5 million in “frictional costs”
like towing, jumpstarting, and loss of productivity when drivers are stranded by a surprise
dead battery. And most important, that means the AT&T Entertainment installer gets to
your house on time.
AT&T is performing analytics on millions of online sales and service chats that help improve
customer service by finding the most helpful ways to answer questions, eliminating
repeated trouble shooting calls, and decreasing average handle time. One recent study of
sales chats found that if a representative used all five words where, when, what, which and
how in the first half of a chat transcript, the conversation was 21 percent more likely to
result in a sale. In other words, the data showed that they needed to be inquisitive to truly
help the customer.
AT&T’s security analytics makes use of artificial intelligence and predictive modeling to
detect, assess and block evolving threats to protect customers and assets with greater
confidence. This includes anomaly detection internally through machine learning, and
scanning billions of daily events within minutes for external security clients.
In AT&T network management, control loop systems play a vital role in delivering
operational cost savings. Control loop automation can be categorized into open loop or
closed loop systems. Open loop systems capture telemetry and diagnostics data from the
underlying cloud infrastructure (e.g. syslog, SNMP, fault and performance management
events), perform a set of analytics and provide reporting or alarms to the operations team.
Closed loop systems continuously monitor the system for fault, performance, security, etc.
related problems and compute a set of signatures based on the detected anomalous
condition. A policy engine then interprets these signatures and appropriate corrective
actions are recommended to repair the system. Once the system has been repaired, a
monitoring application checks the status to see if the system responded to alleviate the
detected problem. The goal is to attain zero downtime or minimal interruptions.
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AT&T is also improving results for its clients:
The Connected Car program enables proactive maintenance, traffic, road conditions, safety,
navigation and entertainment to 8 million cars in US, Canada, and Europe. AT&T has
relationships with 19 automakers to help make driving safer, more comfortable and more
fun for drivers and passengers. Indeed, your car is the “Internet of Things” frontier.
Sensors coupled with Big Data analytics enable smarter and more efficient cities. We’re
helping communities change the game by connecting things like utility meters, street lights
and water systems. Adding connectivity to these physical properties can transform how
cities serve their citizens, use energy and preserve natural resources. And AT&T’s own
anonymous and aggregated network data can play a part. In California, AT&T’s anonymized
network location data is helping to study and reduce traffic congestion. In Texas, AT&T’s
anonymized Wi-Fi location data will soon help to improve the passenger terminal experience
at a major international airport.
In-store analytics using anonymous and aggregate geo-location, social, and demographic
data help AT&T’s business customers know their customer groups better than ever before
possible. It allows retailers to deepen their understanding of shopper segments. The insights
can help them make smarter operational decisions and build stronger relationships with
consumers.
AT&T AdWorks helps advertisers reach the right audience and deliver a better return on
investment on the nation’s largest addressable TV advertising platform. Industry-leading
technology delivers sophisticated second-by-second anonymous set-top box data, which
helps identify the right groups of households to receive a more relevant commercial.
Big Data can even help advance AT&T’s programs for corporate social responsibility. An analysis
of text-message records nationwide helped the It Can Wait anti-texting program study drivers’
actual texting behavior. Our data scientists found that the four states without a full statewide
ban have a roughly 17 percent higher rate of texting while driving than the 46 states with
statewide bans. Programs like this can save lives.
AT&T has already seen

significant savings through data
driven analytics and decision
making. None of this would
have been possible before the
era of Big Data due to the sheer
size of the data sets involved,
the maturity and accessibility of
advanced tools, and the
prohibitive cost of storing
petabytes of data. By leveraging
Big Data technologies, AT&T is
moving from a past constrained
by data volume to a future
driven by data insights as
shown in figure 3.
Page 37
A corporate-wide capabilities evolution is equipping AT&T employees with the skills of the
future. And when these groups work together in this new paradigm – supported on the fly
by trusted, voluminous data that can be sliced and compiled in previously impossible ways –
amazing things happen. Data begins to drive, not measure, the business. Collaboration occurs
across disciplines. New business opportunities are found. The entire business is fueled by data.
Big Data allows AT&T to use scale to its advantage. Rather than getting trapped under mountains
of unorganized data, the company can explore the petabytes of data at its fingertips to make
decisions faster and more accurately, with better results than at any time before. AT&T is
harvesting its complexity. Data becomes the company’s currency, not its enemy.
Big Data is central to AT&T’s transformation and its future.
Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future

To keep up with industry trends and rapidly changing advancements in technology, it’s
important the structure of the organization is evaluated. The blurring of the lines between
IT and network in this software-centric network future eliminates the need to have separate
IT and network organizations.
With this evolution and keeping the customer experience top of mind, AT&T moved its
technology organizations to a new operating model that organizes around “plan, build, and run”
functions, regardless of the technology. AT&T eliminated the operating distinctions between
Labs, IT and Network. The teams reorganized by functions. Teams doing IT and network
architecture were combined into a single “plan” function. Teams doing IT and network software
development were combined into the “build” function. And teams operating the IT data centers
and network hardware were combined into the “run” function.
Three primary business units with unique functional ownership were created: Technology
Design and Architecture (plan), Technology Development (build), and Technology
Operations (run). The new model enables our move to a software-defined, cloud-based
ecosystem and breaks down the silos between the traditional organizations. With the new
structure information, expertise, and experience flow more freely to build the software
based network of the future.
Dynamic changes are underway in the telecommunications industry. These changes required
AT&T to build new skills and to rethink the way it works, so it could adapt to changes more
quickly and deliver faster. AT&T is taking a fresh look at everything. Some of its work force
remains committed to ensuring operational excellence – a cornerstone of the business – while
others will pivot to learn new skills in emerging technologies that will shape future products.
AT&T calls this skills transformation WorkForce 2020. Why do it? Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s
CEO, said it best in a recent interview with The New York Times: “It should be an easy choice for
most workers: Learn new skills or find your career choices are very limited.”
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AT&T’s transformation consists of three components: The Skills Pivot to build competencies
to excel in WorkForce 2020 (WF2020) roles. The Culture Evolution to transform the way
people work, specifically promoting empowerment, trust and transparency, agility, borderless
collaboration and customer focus. Rapid Team Formation to quickly build teams that are
collaborative, innovative, and ready to move to strategic work.
AT&T Technology & Operations
1. SKILLS PIVOT
The goal of AT&T’s talent strategy is to lay the groundwork for employees to pivot their skills
toward the needs of the future. Key activities to transform this workforce to one that is highly
skilled and competent in social, mobile, and digital capabilities include redefining roles, mapping
skills to WF2020 roles and identifying training curriculum.
WF2020 roles align to emerging industry products and services like cloud, virtualization,
mobilization, software defined networks, big data, and others. In partnership with senior
management and human resources, employees were mapped to WF2020 roles based on
discipline, skills and curriculum. The program includes an internal site where employees can
see their WF2020 roles and associated curriculum. Ninety percent of the courses are offered
at no cost through AT&T’s own internal training organization – AT&T University. Specialized
degree programs are also offered through higher learning institutions like Udacity and
Georgia Tech. Completions are logged, allowing employees to track progress and take
ownership/accountability over their learning. New and different courses are constantly
added and refreshed to keep pace with change.
In addition to traditional learning, employees can participate in social learning through the Open
Learning Engine (OLE). In this interactive environment, employees can search a catalogue of over
50,000 articles and videos, endorse the skills of their peers, or join a study group.
As employees progress through their skills pivot, the company provides advanced opportunities
for them to develop their skills. AT&T created Collaborative Experiential Learning Labs (CELL).
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Each CELL has a unique focus, with emphasis on learning through a hands-on approach.
Participants use guided assignments to apply knowledge through modern tools and techniques.
Applied Learning
Collaborative Experiential Learning Lab (CELL)
Responsive SDN Cloud
A Collection of Collaborative Experiential Learning Web Design
Labs – each with a unique focus
CELL offers a hands-on, collaborative opportunity

to enhance technical skills by iteratively Open Android iOS
Source
developing a project
Participants use guided assignments to apply
knowledge through modern and effective tools
Big Data Agile Dev Business
and techniques Tactics Communications
One key challenge to the skills pivot is the experience loop – you can’t get staffed if you don’t
have experience, and you can’t get experience if you don’t get staffed. To address this challenge,
AT&T offers Apprenticeships to provide on-the-job training. Employees are selected based on
future role, specialization, and progress on their skills pivot and matched with strategic,
meaningful work. Success is measured by employee competency, employee movement, skills
growth, and demand fulfillment.
For many employees, the Skills Pivot can seem overwhelming, so AT&T supplies “Skills Pivot
Coaches” who work with employees to help them understand the changing technology
landscape, their WF2020 roles and any competency gaps or recommend training.
2. CULTURE EVOLUTION
To propel an organization the size of AT&T into 2020, a skills pivot wasn’t enough.
The company also had to rethink the way employees work together and how they get
work done. AT&T started by identifying opportunities in the following areas: Empowerment,
Trust and Transparency, Borderless Collaboration, Agility and Customer Focus. In 2015,
the company launched a series of quarterly
programs to support changing behavioral
attributes at all levels through social and
collaborative activities.
AT&T created new workplaces to engage and

retain employees to help them become more
agile, flexible and productive anywhere in the
world. These multi-purpose spaces are
enabled by technology, and designed to foster
collaboration and innovation. In addition,
many locations are establishing their identity
through micro-cultures called “Collaboration
Zones.” As the office environment plays an
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important role in how you feel about your job, these zones aim to create an atmosphere where
employees enjoy being in the office to collaborate and connect with each other.
3. RAPID TEAM FORMATION
Rapid Team Formation is the intersection of AT&T’s Skills Pivot and Culture Transformation.
The company is transforming from traditional placement practices with limited talent and
opportunity visibility and slow bureaucratic processes; to nimble staffing practices that provide
competency based visibility to employees ready for movement and opportunities aligned with
Workforce 2020 roles.
Flex Force is one program established to rapidly provide delivery capacity from a resource pool
of certified, highly skilled and experienced resources. The Flex Force team supports many
different staffing models including turnkey delivery teams, as well as skilled resources including
project managers, business analysts, agile practitioners, software engineers, and technologists.
Flex Force links experts of a business segment, product line, or application with technologists to
quickly form innovative and collaborative
delivery teams. This program offers an
alternative to traditional contracting
models with ease of people movement –
staffing the right people with the right
work at the right price.
To enable a more fluid workforce with

visibility into talent and opportunities,
AT&T is working to deliver The
Opportunity Marketplace (TOM). TOM is a
supply and demand framework focused
on intra-organization movement based on
transparency, rapid team formation, and
feedback. It facilitates the matching of
candidates with potential opportunities
and allows for 360-degree feedback. This deepens the resource pool for client demand, provides
insight into potential hires, and facilitates a more rapid staffing process. With the initial rollout,
skills pivot opportunities like project-based work, Apprenticeships, and job rotations/swaps will
be housed in TOM.
LOOKING FORWARD
The future AT&T workforce will differ greatly from today's workforce in many ways such as
how employees organize around work, how they collaborate, how they learn, how they are
measured and how they are compensated. To accelerate the transformation, AT&T will incubate
WorkForce 2020 Talent, Culture, Leadership and Structure principles on strategic projects that
span the organization. The Incubator model introduces the following elements to cross-
functional teams to directly enable agility, innovation, collaboration and co-creation.
Page 41
Create 2020 Leaders through coaching and individual leadership plans

Flatten the organization and ensure roles of the future are effectively aligned
Enrich experiential learning to drive higher efficiency and proficiency
Transform policy associated with performance management, process
and people movement
Enhance individual and organizational performance through coaching
and feedback workshops
Flex Force is well positioned as a catalyst toward this vision to incubate change within a practical,
live delivery environment. Collaboration with Human Resources, Finance and other AT&T
organizations continues to be crucial to success and eventual proliferation of change.
In an effort to accelerate AT&T’s transformation and drive adoption across ATO, new operating
models called Incubators will be organized by domain (cloud, big data, etc.) and function
(platform, product, OSS, BSS, etc.) as immersive environments for Skill-Pivoted Resources,
New Culture Adopters, Leadership, and Nimble Flattened Team Structures to grow and achieve
business outcomes.
Conclusion
AT&T’s technology transformation affects nearly every aspect of the business. From the
network, to customer interactions, to IT processes, to the workforce- this is a top-to-bottom
initiative. AT&T customers are demanding this change. They expect fast and plentiful bandwidth,
intuitive and responsive network services, secure cloud-based capabilities, seamless digital
interactions, the intelligence and personalization that comes from big data, and an agile and
software-centric workforce that can deliver it all.
To meet increasing customer and marketplace expectations, AT&T is becoming a technology

company. AT&T is operating at startup speed. It’s migrating legacy applications to the cloud
while ensuring new applications are cloud-enabled from the start. Given the exploding demand
for network services, coupled with a cost competitive marketplace, the only solution is to build
capabilities on the flexibility and efficiency of software.
AT&T’s journey is a multifaceted, multi-year approach designed to transform how networks are
built and operated, while modernizing target platforms and applications. The six major
categories outlined in this document work together to enable this transformation. Application
rationalization and building the integrated cloud reduce complexity and increase efficiency,
creating a homogeneous foundation to land IT applications and virtualized network functions.
Building platforms for the future enable new virtualized network services; and platforms like the
API platform facilitate high reuse, lower cycle times and reduced costs. Building a seamless and
predictive customer experience gives customers the always-on digital interactions they prefer, in
a personalized and effortless way. Big Data begins to drive – not measure –, the business,
facilitating collaboration across disciplines, liberating data from siloed applications, providing key
insights to the business and to customers, and highlighting new business opportunities. And
organizing differently and building a workforce for the future gives AT&T the ability to break
Page 42
down traditional network and IT barriers, facilitate refreshing employee skills through
continuous learning; and deliver new capabilities in an IP and web scale world.
Significant savings come from retiring applications, but a commitment to continuous

reinvestment on an annual basis was critical to the success of AT&T’s transformation. By
reinvesting the savings in transformational initiatives, a new cost trajectory was established
for the business that yields year over year savings well in excess of the reinvestment. In
addition, the cost reduction, speed, and agility gained from the IT technology transformation
is an important weapon for the business in a highly competitive and fast changing marketplace.
AT&T executives often note that the network is like oxygen. Most of the time, you don’t even
notice it. But when it’s not there, it’s a crisis. All of the business units and efforts outlined in this
whitepaper have to work to keep the network mobile, always on, and secure. More importantly,
they have to work together. An elegant cloud application is useless to a customer with a slow
and unreliable wireless connection. And network connectivity doesn’t do much good if
customers are struggling to sign up for service or pay their bills. Innovation is everyone’s
responsibility at AT&T.
The company considers this one of the pivotal moments in the history of networking, no less
significant than the transition to the internet. AT&T began its 2020 journey several years ago
and is now leading this transformative shift in the industry. It’s a shift all telecom companies will
have to grapple with at some point. Those that don’t will struggle to remain relevant, just as did
video rental stores, music studios and others that failed to grasp the importance of the internet.
Transforming a company isn’t easy. It requires leaving behind a business model that’s been
successful in the past for a new model designed for the future. The status quo is always easier,
right up until the moment when new competitors, unencumbered by the traditional way of
doing things, leap ahead. When that happens, regaining that lost ground is nearly impossible.
The best companies think of ways to make themselves obsolete before their competition can do
the same. AT&T has taken that lesson to heart. The only way it’s been able to survive and thrive
for nearly a century and a half is through constant renewal. Change is the only constant.
If you don't like change, you're going

to like irrelevance even less.
- General Eric Shinseki
Page 43

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AT&T Technology Transformation

February 22, 2017

AT&T Technology Transformation

Industry Trends and the Case for Change ....................................................................8

Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network ................................................ 12

Building Platforms for the Future .................................................................................... 19

Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer

Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future .................................... 38

In short, AT&T needed to change how it worked.

The company needed a technology and organizational transformation to overcome these

Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network:

As AT&T launched a software defined network transformation to transition from purpose-built

Building Platforms for the Future:

Building a Seamless and Predictive Customer Experience:

Big Data and Becoming a Data Driven Business:

Moving from a system-centric culture to a data-driven culture requires new thinking in

Organizing Differently and Building a Workforce for the Future:

AT&T developed a competency-based program requiring technical education, hands on

Industry Trends and the Case for Change

Application rationalization at AT&T begins with a simple methodology. This methodology is

Identify – Inventory and classify redundant services by application area

Identify establishes the foundation necessary to be successful at application rationalization.

Integrated Cloud as the Foundation for IT and Network

Build an integrated cloud for IT applications and AT&T’s software-centric network

AT&T’s Cloud Transformation Principles

PRINCIPLE 1: LEVERAGE OPEN SOURCE AND AT&T’S INNOVATION

With OpenStack as the

PRINCIPLE 2: AUTOMATE, DESIGN, DEPLOY AND MANAGE AT SCALE

PRINCIPLE 3: TARGET STRATEGIC IT APPLICATIONS FOR MIGRATION TO THE CLOUD

AT&T established a programmatic approach to manage the migration of applications to

AT&T consciously decided what applications were moved to an orchestrated and

2013 2014 2015 2016

PRINCIPLE 4: EXTEND THE CLOUD TO BE THE FOUNDATION OF AT&T’S SOFTWARE DEFINED

AT&T launched a software defined network transformation to transition from purpose-built

Advancements in cloud infrastructure technology have delivered significant benefits -- cost

Realized Benefits of Moving to:

Building Platforms for the Future

Enable the delivery of feature-rich customer centric communication platforms

1. Reinventing the Network with Software

1. REINVENTING THE NETWORK WITH SOFTWARE

Software is enabling AT&T to deliver additional feature-rich customer centric platforms

2. TRANSFORMING THE BUSINESS WITH THE API PLATFORM

Provide the means for mission critical business functions to operate

The API platform adopted four principles to guide its design:

AT&T’s API Platform Design Principles

A. Design for Growth

Transactions per Year

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Design and development tooling – A model-driven development framework generates code

C. Standardization and Adoption

D. Design the platform to evolve

API Platform Benefits

Below are the technology benefits resulting from the platform:

3. BUILDING AND SECURING THE CLOUD ECOSYSTEM

Automatic orchestration of micro perimeter security protection “rings”

ASTRA Platform Feature

Functional ASTRA Architecture

Intelligent creation of security policies and controls