In 2015, Telstra, Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company, and Pivotal, a fast-rising Silicon Valley software startup, embarked on a joint venture to: (1) accelerate Telstra’s transformation into a technology company, and (2) help Australia’s largest enterprises and government agencies to run and operate software at startup speeds.
Today, Rob Mee (CEO, Pivotal) and Andy Penn (CEO, Telstra) spoke at the joint Telstra/Pivotal office in Sydney to celebrate the partnership and discuss innovative change happening both at Telstra and with Pivotal customers such as Macquarie Bank, NSW Government, and CoreLogic RP Data.
Telstra is focused on digitization, and the technology that will help them deliver new customer experiences, as well as shape the future of Australia. In some cases, Telstra’s software development time has decreased from 6-8 months to 10-12 weeks through its work with Pivotal; enabling Telstra to move at startup speeds to develop software-based products and quickly get create change for customers.
Pivotal Labs, a strategic consultancy branch of Pivotal, has trained four of Telstra’s Silicon Valley-esque teams who are now in turn training their colleagues in building and operating software using Pivotal’s next-generation agile methodologies and lean startup techniques on Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
“Digital transformation is on the minds of every business, from the US to Australia. To adapt, companies need to bring together the best of modern cloud platform, as well as empower developers and IT teams to build and operate software similar to Internet companies and startups,” said Rob Mee, CEO, Pivotal. “Our joint venture with Telstra leverages Pivotal’s Silicon Valley know-how and cloud technology with the breadth and scale of Telstra, Australia’s leading telecommunications and technology company.”
Telstra’s first project —focused on working with the Agricultural industry and resulted in the creation of the —was the award-winning Ram Select app that uses geo-matching technology to help ram buyers better monitor and track the quality of the livestock to ensure the right quality sheep is used to deliver the best quality product, from food to textiles.
Our most recent project, the new Telstra service status page, keeps Telstra customers informed during service disruptions and get them reconnected quicker by helping them resolve issues by themselves.
Our Customers’ Transformation
Telstra has and will continue to play an important role in accelerating Pivotal’s approach to software in Australia. Our joint venture guides businesses every step of the way to create software, services and solutions with speed and agility.
“Pivotal has been essential to fueling innovation through agility and quicker time to market at CoreLogic,” says Greg Dickason, International CTO at CoreLogic RP Data. “Pivotal helped us incubate a changed cultural way of doing things and, through DevOps operational efficiencies Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides, a better way of delivering our products.”
“Digitisation is a core focus for Telstra and we have been working on a range of digital content for our customers. Using Pivotal’s Customer Led Design Thinking based approach has helped us to maximise the effectiveness of these tools so that they meet customer need, leading to improved utilisation by our customers,” said Tony Sutherland, GM Digital and Self Service at Telstra.
“Working with Pivotal has significantly reduced the time it takes to get a detailed understanding of the positive impact new tools will have on customers. Where previously this could take many months, we are now able to identify how well a product will resonate with customers in a few days, creating additional time for product enhancements and issue rectification.”
We continue to see exciting software-driven innovation coming out of Australia. Built on our shared vision for the future of cloud-native software development for the enterprise, we look forward to continuing our great relationship with Telstra into the coming years!
