BT DEFENCE
Cole says : “ BT has been part of that journey as it has in many ways , really moved from being a traditionally telecommunications focused company to trying to work further up the stack and understand how we can help our partner to make that journey to datacentricity , and , of course , doing that in the context of significant cybersecurity threats .”
“ We are already very much a trusted partner of the MoD , and are one of its major suppliers ,” he continues . “ The two major programmes that we work on at the moment – the DFTS and the IUS – will eventually come to a natural end , and the MOD will recompete and run for new business . Naturally , we wish to be in the running for future business and by no means take that for granted . What we seek to do is partner with defence and , where appropriate , the wider network of partners out in the defence industry – as well as the wider commercial environment – to deliver the successor programmes for those in parallel to that .
“ BT recently launched a new Charter for its Enterprise customers to provide them with a springboard for growth . This will be delivered through a greater focus on innovation , world-class cybersecurity , a new suite of digital services , customer service improvements and purpose-driven goals . For example , we recently set up the Division X unit within BT ’ s Enterprise business , which will accelerate the development of customer solutions that integrate emerging technologies such as 5G , IoT , Edge Compute , Cloud and AI .
“ I also think that our defence team needs to exploit the opportunities for that . An example might be private 5G networks to enable Internet of Things ( IoT ) solutions to be deployed and find business opportunities for our customers , which can improve either their productivity , efficiency , operational outcomes or their security . There ' s all sorts of use-cases to do that , and we want to be part of that journey . We want to move ourselves into an environment where we can exploit the technologies available and help the customer to really move on its own digital transformation .”
As with a lot of organisations , BT ’ s Enterprise unit has a small business development team working on defence . They also have a sales team that includes account managers and a frontline command-facing customer engagement team .
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