DTW 2022: Vodafone Germany CIO Ulrich Irnich wants to break the IT bottleneck

Ulrich Irnich is not only Vodafone Germany’s CIO. He is also responsible for Vodafone Group’s global “Modernization Garage”, which is driving transformation of business support systems (BSS) across the companies. In both roles he is determined to see that Vodafone IT generates value instead of standing in the way of progress.

Speaking at Digital Transformation World in Copenhagen Wednesday, Irnich said his top priority is to create a nimble IT department that can react quickly to change. “We need to have a different speed,” he said, adding that he wants to “unlock digital IT to be really an enabler.”

Irnich believes the speed of innovation that telecoms has witnessed in the past five years will quadruple in the next five. “This kind of speed increase – at the end equation for us, it’s very simple,” he said. “There is just one way: You’ll be part of that speed, or you’ll be out.”

In the past, IT has been “the biggest bottleneck” to innovation, according to Irnich. Keys to changing this are people and skills.

All of Vodafone has been undergoing radical transformation for several years, and the company is relying on TM Forum’s Open Digital Framework to enable its transition to a platform business. Vodafone Group is one of three communications service providers (CSPs) that were awarded with “Running on ODA” status at the DTW event. The company is one of the earliest adopters of the TM Forum Open Digital Architecture (ODA) and Open APIs.

A CSP is Running on ODA if it meets the following criteria:

• ODA is its default reference enterprise architecture.
• It has widespread ODA competence evidenced by ODA training certifications.
• The company is actively contributing to ODA development, driven by real-world operational needs.
• Open APIs are deployed and in operational use.
• Open API conformance is mandatory for its suppliers, and ODA competence is expected evidenced by ODA training certifications

The criteria for Running on ODA are assessed jointly by the CSP and TM Forum’s CTO office using the ODA Success Framework, which is a light but rigorous evaluation based on six key dimensions necessary for delivering successful business outcomes using ODA (ODA principles/rules, ODA skills, Open APIs, ODA components, agile governance and process models). Running on ODA status is renewed annually through self-assessment and biannually by joint assessment with the TM Forum CTO office.

Vodafone’s approach to transformation is four-pronged, according to Irnich:

Insourcing – the company is working to bring software expertise back into the company after years of outsourcing, with a pledge to hire 7,000 new software engineers. “We drained our own talent,” he said. “So, we took a bold move and said, ‘We want to insource; We want to get back to knowledge in our company’.” That’s number one.”

Engineering – Vodafone is adopting practices across the company to create a “composable” business that relies on Agile and DevOps practices.

Modernization – Large transformation programs have become a thing of the past, replaced by continuous modernization.

Re-use – Components and functionality built by one market are made available to all markets, and if it already exists, teams will not build it again. As an example, Irnich pointed to a loyalty program developed by Vodafone Turkey’s IT team using ODA principles, which is now being implemented in Germany, Spain and Italy.