The_communique_July 2019_v1.2

JULY -2019 The Communique

Sundaram Krishnamoorthy Welcome to the BT Account Newsletter Past few months, I have been having several interactions through various forums with all of you. The energy and enthusiasm have been tremendous as always and this encouraged me to find a right forum to continue with the interactions. This Newsletter, in its new spirit and format will enable us to connect, interchange and share views, celebrate accomplishments and keep the momentum going. Encouraging all of you to step in and be a part of this initiative. The year that went by has been an eventful year for the BT account. Most of the work that we were doing with BT came under the competitive tender. I take this opportunity to announce that with all your dedication, commitment and devotion, we have been able to retain most of them. This year also saw steady growth after a hiatus, fueling renewed confidence and conviction to step into the new financial year. We are poised for a steep growth this year too. BT has embarked on a journey to transform the way we work. The ‘Da Vinci’ initiative is leading and paving way in transforming the way we work for BT. I would urge each one of you to embrace the change wholeheartedly. If I were to call on a few aspects that are extremely critical to the transformation and the growth journey, they would be the following: 1. Design thinking 2. Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning 3. Automation 4. Full stack development 5. Agile and Scrum Management In short, we have to be the “brilliant people” that will power the transformation that BT is striving for. We will enable you all the way. There are multiple training platforms available. We are also conducting specific targeted trainings in Wave 2 technologies. This team has been always been the bedrock on which we have developed and delivered many success stories helping the account grow. I am confident we will once again step up and exceed all expectations. All the best and I am excited to be part of the journey with you all. You are making a difference and let us continue to do so. Thank You. - Sundaram To quote our “Treat your mind like a Parachute and keep it open so that it works. CEO, And that means being open to learning and open to CHANGE!”

TABLE OF CONTENTS Achieving a Tech-Life Balance 01 Table of contents In the 21st century, Technology has enabled us as Achieving a Tech-Life humans to make strides our ancestors could only Balance dream of. And yet, nagging doubts remain that technology is taking over our lives. 02 What’s New? Love it or loathe it, technology affects almost everything in life and it also influences most of our 03 Tech Talk Knowledge plans for the future. Whether we experience the Center Diversity benefits of a driver less cars, use a mobile phone, listen to music, surf the internet for movies or turn 04 BT Events the GPS on in our car, we are constantly enjoying the benefits of a hi-tech life. Technology making our 05 Tech Talk Knowledge lives healthier, more convenient and more Center Diversity and Quiz entertaining in 2019. Can we enjoy the benefits of technology without 06 Cover page Story succumbing to a tech-controlled life? Can we control Question of the month it without being controlled by it? Our hints for achieving a tech-life balance. 07 Wall of Fame Limit social media time: Studies have shown they are addictive. If you find yourself constantly reaching for the remote or checking your news feed, consider limiting your daily intake. Social media can be used in ways that support your life, but overuse can diminish it. Spend time with people: Connect with people to discuss and learn new things. It helps to come out from the mechanical life. Reconnect with nature and exercise: studies have shown nature and exercise help fight stress and depression. Consider doing 30 minutes of exercise outside each day with a friend, and experience the benefits a short break from technology can offer! - Amit Saxena

What’s new @ BT?  Overall performance improved by 28%. To deliver the State of the art solution in digital space, During Q1, BT wholesale Online (Portal and WCDS) BT digital has undergone with Organizational Level migrated to Enterprise cloud – A remarkable Changes. achievement by the team.  EOSL infra tool set upgraded to Cloud infra software which gives facility to extend infrastructure capacity for future work.  More than 30 Portal web applications & its associated components are upgraded from JDK 1.6 to JDK 1.8, WebLogic 12C, Oracle 12C and migrated builds to maven - that help to enable CI-CD to achieve BT’s DevOps roadmap.  WCDS: Upgrade to Oracle 12c suite which includes Database, ODI and Golden Gate upgrades  This has improved data availability by 20% and increase the system stability. Atlantis Upgrade Delivery at Pace Upgrade to RBM 9.0.8 from 8.0.4 and upgrade from Oracle 11g to 12c Tech M managed the program E2E (including COTS vendors and other impacted components ) orchestrating a high quality delivery Delivered 800+ modules with customised code changes to absorb object level changes 18TB of data migrated with no data quality issues Customer Centric Key benefits A host of business benefits for the CPs – charging Improved performance (Bill generation time reduced beyond account termination date, prorating of from 2 days to 1 day – All CPs billed on 1st day of charges for specific no. of days, Negotiable billing month) time discounts, Notifications on payment due dates Ability to implement Domaining & Partitioning which is and aggregation of revenue feeds on Monthly basis. a key driver for Active-Active server architecture Reduced downtime during deployments Matter of pride Smooth upgrade on 14th Jun with zero issues Managing a big bang upgrade on such a business critical application with Zero noise/ issues bears testimony to TechM’s expertise in System Integration & Transformations Atlantis bills circa £500 Mn every month for ~2.5K accounts across ~640 CPs.

Project: One Siebel: Title: Jenkins – Siebel Deployment 2.0 The traditional process of Siebel deployment is tangled with multiple micro-services and automated using different languages and tools. This resulted in a cumbersome and laborious deployment prone to human error with the deployment duration being high. ‘The larger the outage, lesser the application uptime’ which also means the frequency of deployment and new changes made available for testing were less frequent too. In a quest to improvise and automate the existing process, a set of feasible and adaptable tools were evaluated. Jenkins took the place due to its ease to integrate with existing process and future scope. Jenkins is an open source automation tool written in Java with plugins built for Continuous Integration purpose. Few benefits attained include –  Reduction in deployment time (~50%)  Reduction in human error. Improved quality of build and deployment process reduced the defects  Ability to schedule the jobs, for multiple instances and interval.  User friendly, able to track all job activities with time trend and success rate.  Ease to monitor jobs and check activity logs.  Ability to integrate with Test Automation (Selenium). Knowledge Centre Let's recap the history of telecom wireless. It started with 1G, where the communication was carried out through analog signals. 2G introduced where the communication is transformed through digital signals. As part of 2.5G, GPRS introduced with 56 to 64 kbps and subsequently 2.75G launched with EDGE communication with 176 kbps data rate. Later, there was a significant development to increase the data rates with 3G (UMTS) with 384 kbps speed with video calling. After 3G, within a short time 4G came with 1 gbps data rate for stationary users and 100 mbps for high mobility users. 3.5G with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) and 3.75G (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) facilitated for high downloading and uploading the data. 3.9G came as LTE (Long-Term Evolution) achieve high targeted speeds launched as 4G LTE. Now, 5G is in evolutionary stage with 5gbps data rate with low latency. 5G network will meet disruptive use cases as connected devices and lifeline communications. Omkar Satish Diversity At RMZ Ecoworld, triggered off some random “All Women” sessions…a get together to discuss and share experiences on topics related to challenges, suggestions specific to women….. Kick started the series with a session on “Women and Leadership” chaired by Geeta Menon. This session focused on traits of successful women leaders, the strengths they bring to the table in Leadership roles, Myths of leadership…concluding with Golda Meir as an Inspiration. “Some Leaders are born Women” was the takeaway. The next session on “Work Life Balance” by Malini Sundaram opened up a Pandoras Box on the challenges, the pain….the misery…..Well essayed by tips on possible options to finally strike a work life balance. “Integrate work in our daily life to strike a balance” she concluded with confidence. The next session on “Communication” delivered by Rekha Patil ended up being a very informative and interactive session. Dos and Don’ts, gaps and over the top…..all aspects of communication were the highlights. These sessions helped Women in RMZ get to know each other better, provide an opportunity for women associates to present their topic of interest and help share views, concerns and experiences. - Malini Sundaram

The Event BT event on 29th June - Sheraton Grand Bengaluru BT event on 02nd July - UK  BT’s Annual Tech Talent Awards Ceremony to felicitate their star projects and performers.  500+ BT associates attended the event –held at the Grand Sheraton, Whitefield, Bangalore on 29thJune 2019.  On the sidelines of the event, TechM got an opportunity to showcase key offerings covering AI/ML, AR/VR, NetDevOps, E-commerce, AQT & ChatOps. • Other BT vendors at the event included Virtusa, iOPEX and REJOLUT.  125+ delegates visited the TechM booth and experienced the demos –Positive feedback from all visitors. Questions of the Month v My wife's most famous achievement was in Missouri in 1983, my first cousin's biggest moment was in Los Angeles in March 2001. Mine was in Wellington in 1991, something which i still share with Sir Don Bradman? Who am I? Only Once in World Cup history has an exhibition match also been played by two participating teams on the same day their actual fixture. Which World Cup and who were the two teams? Tweet your responses @communique_m to win exciting prizes!!

Technical Talk RPA & Effectiveness By Sampath Kumar, GS CTIO Team Robotic process automation is the technology that allows anyone to configure computer software, or “robot” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting with digital system to execute your business process. RPA robots utilise the user interface to capture data and manipulate application just like humans to. The interpret, trigger responses and communicate with other systems in order to perform on a vast variety of repeated new task RPA Success Factor Factors to Be Considered for RPA How RPA Distinctive RPA is easy to configure, so developers don’t need programming skills. Business operations people with process and subject matter expertise but with no programming experience can be trained to independently to automate Simple processes within a few weeks. Factors to Be Considered for RPA RPA software is non-invasive. RPA software accesses other computer systems Let's investigate the most relevant factors that can help the way a human does—through the user interface with a logon ID and password. RPA organizations determine if a business process is well-suited for software accesses other systems through the presentation layer, so no underlying systems automation and how it will benefit from RPA. programming logic is touched. Furthermore, RPA products do not store any data.  Employee Involvement  Standardization and Stability  Complexity  Volume RPA is enterprise-safe. RPA is a robust platform that is designed to meet Advantages of RPA enterprise IT requirements for security, scalability, auditability, and change management. RPA robots are deployed, scheduled and monitored on centralized, interconnected IT supported infrastructure to ensure transactional integrity, compliance with enterprise security models.

TEAM INDIA In spite of being thumped out of ICC Cricket World Cup after their misfortune in the semi-last against New Zealand on Wednesday, Team India has earned gestures of recognition for indicating huge battling soul all through the competition. Virat Kohli and his group had lost only one match till their crucial experience against the Kiwi’s. However, as indicated by the commander, simply the initial 45 minutes of the pursuit brought about the whole crusade falling off its pivots. And keeping in mind that the cricketers may select to take comfort from the feelings from a billion or more fans, at the end it’s all about team spirit. Was this Dhoni’s Last World Cup? Maahi as he is popularly known as, gave us Two World Cup’s, i.e. T20 in 2007, and 50-50 in 2011, apart from other victorious moments. The man whose stature has been next to God of Cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, surely has won many hearts as compared to any sportsperson in recent times. But critics say with age, his performance is diminishing. Is it? He has always been a match winner, a savior and has maintained his composure no matter whatever has been the situation. But is age actually a factor? Is there any cricket left in him? That’s something which we can’t comment. He is someone who could hide feelings with smile and is far more than numbers and records. We don’t want Dhoni to quit. He is the “go-to man” in Indian Cricket Team and his commitment to the nation and team is indubitable. MS Dhoni is the greatest cricketer India has ever produced- Kapil Dev”

Thank you for your great support in the voice expansion program. During the project we had many challenges which were professionally dealt with by you and your help is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to work on new projects with you 1. Ketan Kashv Phalak 2. Indranil Choudhury 3. Dhanshree Hemant 4. Pranita Bhor 5. Balaji kodgirwar