Deutsche Telekom and Google are expanding their partnership in three key areas: enhanced mobile messaging services for businesses through Telekom RCS Business Messaging powered by Google and Jibe Cloud; the new Sovereign Cloud for Germany will be available to German cloud customers ahead of schedule; and Telekom’s premium TV experience, MagentaTV One, powered by Android TV OS available now in Germany and expanding to additional European markets.
CEO Tim Höttges and Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussed this expanded partnership as part of Telekom's internal digital kick-off event attended by around 1,000 top managers.
"Deutsche Telekom is a longstanding and important partner for us, going back to the launch of the G1, the first smartphone powered by Android, in 2008,” says Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “Today’s announcements will expand the range of helpful and trusted products and services that we can provide to businesses and consumers across business messaging, cloud computing, and TV experiences.”
Some highlights:
RCS messaging: Telekom and Google currently offer enhanced mobile messaging services for millions of Android users across Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. This new expanded partnership extends Rich Communication Service (RCS) to customers of Telekom in Germany. In addition, Telekom announces for its entire European footprint the availability of Telekom RCS Business Messaging, provided by Google. The service enables secure, efficient and highly engaging exchanges between customers and companies via messaging. Consumers can order products, make reservations, purchase tickets and more through a seamless digital experience within their messaging app, while companies can create and manage messages to reach target groups more effectively and increase brand loyalty.
German Sovereign Cloud: the launch of the new Sovereign Cloud for Germany will take place ahead of schedule. Telekom's business customer arm T-Systems and Google Cloud are launching their new sovereign cloud service in spring 2022. It will be available for all clients, initially out of the Frankfurt Google Cloud Region. Telekom and Google confirmed that they will jointly drive innovation for the cloud, closely aligned with the new German government's digital plans which aims to build a public administration cloud based on a multi-cloud strategy and open interfaces, as well as meeting strict sovereignty and transparency requirements. To this end, the partners are setting up a Co-Innovation Center in Munich as announced in November 2021. In addition, executive briefing facilities in Munich and one in Berlin will be established for close collaboration with customers.
T-Systems will manage a set of sovereignty controls and measures, including encryption and identity management. In addition, T-Systems will exercise a control function over relevant parts of the German Google Cloud infrastructure. Any physical or virtual access to facilities in Germany (such as routine maintenance and upgrades) will be under the supervision of T-Systems and Google Cloud.
MagentaTV One launches in Germany: the new service is powered by Android TV OS. MagentaTV One combines classic TV with a wide variety of streaming services, media libraries, and numerous apps via the Google Play Store. MagentaTV One is Deutsche Telekom’s second device powered by Android TV OS in Germany, following the successful launch of the MagentaTV Stick in 2020.
https://telekom.com/en/media/media-information/archive/telekom-and-google-expand-partnership-645356
T-Systems teams with Google Cloud on sovereign cloud for Germany
T-Systems announced a strategic, long-term partnership with Google Cloud to provide a sovereign cloud for German enterprises, the public sector, and healthcare organizations.
The companies agreed to develop a large spectrum of next-generation sovereign cloud solutions and infrastructure where customers can host their sensitive workloads whilst continuing to leverage the scalability, elasticity and reliability of public cloud services. Service management and operation of the sovereign cloud will be supervised by T-Systems.
The new joint offering that will be available as of mid 2022 and then upgraded over the following months. In addition, T Systems will exercise a control function over relevant parts of the German Google Cloud infrastructure.
"Our joint strategic goal is to support the digitalization of European companies and the public sector as they move operations to the cloud," explained Adel Al-Saleh, member of the Telekom Board of Management and CEO of T-Systems. "Together with Google Cloud, we will build a sovereign cloud services portfolio that provides clients with full control over their data, software and operations whilst leveraging the full power of Google Cloud. Even stricter compliance requirements for public sector institutions will be addressed. We are happy that we’ll be able to offer customers a cloud solution that is secure and sovereign, but also gives access to the innovation and scalability of Google Cloud in Germany. We are also considering Austria and Switzerland as a next step," he added.
"We’re committed to helping enable Germany’s digital transformation,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Data privacy, security and control are vital to European and German organizations as they digitize their operations. The sovereign cloud solution we are partnering with T-Systems to create will provide public and private-sector organizations with an additional layer of technical and operational measures and controls that ensure German customers can meet their data, operational, and software sovereignty requirements."
T-Systems enters strategic collaboration agreement with AWS
T-Systems and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement to manage the digital transformation of companies more quickly, efficiently and securely.
T-Systems said the agreement will spur it to build out capacity in both solutions and people through a strong training and enablement program. The ICT service provider intends to train 3,000 additional AWS experts as part of the new collaboration.
Regarding security, AWS and T-Systems agreed to closely collaborate to achieve the targets recently set by the European regulation.
“Since the beginning of our relationship with AWS, we have built up expertise in AWS technology and combined it with our extensive experience from major transformation projects. Our customers appreciate this,” explained Adel Al-Saleh, member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management and CEO T-Systems.
https://www.t-systems.com/us/en/about-t-systems/news/t-systems-and-aws-expand-collaboration-365120
Deutsche Telekom aligns with Microsoft Azure
Deutsche Telekom and Microsoft announced a seven-year strategic agreement to help customers of all sizes accelerate their cloud transformation initiatives.
"We have agreed on the framework for joint strategic growth with our long-term partner Microsoft. We are delighted," said Adel Al-Saleh, member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management and CEO of T-Systems. "This partnership will enable us to enhance services for our customers. We will also be supporting each other with digitalization and network build-out."
Highlights
- Telekom plans to migrate the majority of its internal IT workloads to the public cloud by 2025 and Azure is a central part of that strategy. Through a companywide training program, thousands of Telekom employees will learn how to maximize the benefits of Azure.
- Telekom will also offer its customers direct access to the Microsoft cloud through Azure ExpressRoute.
- Telekom will offer Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams. As part of this, the companies have started a project for German schools to reimagine traditional approaches to education, enabling remote learning through cloud-based IT infrastructure, modern devices and the cloud productivity and collaboration applications within Microsoft 365.
- Telekom will help its customers with moving their SAP environments to Azure. SAP solutions on Azure offer enterprise-grade security, and business continuity and reduce hardware expenses, making it easier for start-ups and smaller organizations to get started.
