Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how communications company T-Mobile improved application quality, while setting up two data centers.

1. Discover Case Study: T-Mobile Completes Impressive Data
Center Transformation Using ALM Tools from HP
Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how communications company T-Mobile improved
application quality, while setting up two data centers.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor:
HP
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series coming to you
from the HP Discover 2011 conference in Las Vegas. We're here on the
Discover show floor this week, the week of June 6, to explore some major
enterprise IT solution trends and innovations making news across HP’s
ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.
I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and I'll be your
host throughout this series of HP-sponsored Discover live discussions.
[Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
Our user case study today focuses on an award-wining migration and transformation and, I
guess, a data center grand supreme transition for T-Mobile. I was really impressed with the scope
and size and the amount of time -- in terms of being short -- for you to do this.
We're here with two folks who are going to tell us more about what T-Mobile has done to set up
two data centers, and how in the process, have improved their application quality and the
processes behind their application lifecycle management (ALM). So, join me in welcoming
Michael Cooper. He is the Senior Director of Enterprise IT Quality Assurance at T-Mobile.
Welcome, Michael.
Michael Cooper: Thank you.
Gardner: We're also here with Kirthy Chennaian. He is the Director Enterprise IT Quality
Management at T-Mobile. Welcome.
Kirthy Chennaian: Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Gardner: People don’t just do these sorts of massive hundred-plus million dollar activities
because it's nice to have. This must have been something that was really essential for you.
Cooper: Absolutely. There are some definite business drivers behind setting up a world-class,
green data center and then a disaster-recovery data center. Just for a little bit of a clarification.
The award that we won is primarily focused on the testing effort and the quality assurance (QA)
effort that went into that.

2. Gardner: Kirthy, tell me why you decided to undertake both an application transformation as
well as a data center transformation almost simultaneously?
Chennaian: Given the scope and complexity of the initiative ensuring system availability was
primarily the major driver behind this. QA plays a significant role in ensuring that both data
centers were migrated simultaneously, that the applications were available in real-time, and that
from a quality assurance and testing standpoint we had to meet timeframes and timelines.
Gardner: Let's get a sense of the scope. First and foremost, Michael, tell me about T-Mobile and
its stature nowadays.
Significant company
Cooper: T-Mobile is a national provider of voice, data, and messaging services. Right now,
we're the fourth largest carrier in the US and have about 33 million
customers and $21 billion in revenue, actually a little bit more than that.
So, it's a significant company.
We're a company that’s really focused on our customers, and we've gone
through an IT modernization. The data center efforts were a big part of
that IT modernization, in addition to modernizing our application
platform.
Gardner: Let's also talk about the scope of your movement to a new data
center, and then we can get into the application transformation parts of that.
In a nutshell, what did we do here? It sounds like we've set up two modern data centers and then
migrated your apps and data from an older one into those.
Chennaian: Two world-class data centers, as Michael had pointed out. One in Wenatchee,
Washington and the other one is Tempe, Arizona. The primary data center is the one in
Wenatchee, and the failover disaster-recovery data center is in Tempe, Arizona.
Cooper: What we were doing was migrating more than 175 Tier 1 applications and Tier 0, and
some Tier 2 as well. It was a significant effort requiring quite a bit of planning, and the HP tools
had a big part in that, especially in the QA realm.
Gardner: Now, were these customer-facing apps, internal apps, logistics? Are we talking about
retail? Give me a sense of the scope here on the breadth and depth of your apps?
Chennaian: Significant. We're talking critical applications that are customer-facing. We're
talking enterprise applications that span across the entire organization. And, we're also talking
about applications that support these critical front-end applications. So, as Michael pointed out,
175 applications needed to be migrated across both of the data centers.

3. For example, moving T-Mobile.com, which is a customer-facing critical application, ensuring
that it was transitioned seamlessly and was available to the customer in real-time was probably
one of the key examples of the criticality behind ensuring QA for this effort.
Gardner: IT is critical for almost all companies nowadays, but I can't imagine a company where
technology is more essential and critical than T-Mobile as a data and services carrier.
What's the case with the customer response? Do you have any business metrics, now that you’ve
gone through this, that demonstrate not just that you're able to get better efficiency and your
employees are getting better response times from their apps and data, but is there like a tangible
business benefit, Michael?
Near-perfect availability
Cooper: I can't give you the exact specifics, because of corporate communication and legal
groups, but we've had significant increases in our system uptime and almost near-
perfect availability in most areas. That’s been the biggest thing.
Kirthy mentioned T-Mobile.com. That’s an example where, instead of the
primary and the backup, we actually have an active-active situation in the data
center. So, if one goes down the other one is there, and this is significant.
A significant part of the way that we used HP tools in this process was not only
the functional testing with Quick Test Professional and Quality Center, but we also
did the performance testing with Performance Center and found some very significant issues that
would have gone to production.
This is a unique situation, because we actually got to do the performance testing live in the
performance environments. We got to scale up to real performance type of loads and found some
real good issues that instead of the customers facing them, they didn’t have to face them.
The other thing that we did that was unique was high-availability testing. We tested each server
to make sure that if one went down, the other ones were stable and could support our customers.
Gardner: Now, this was a case where not only were you migrating apps, but you were able to go
in and make sure that they were going to perform well within this in new environment. As you
pointed out, Michael, you were able to find some issues in those apps in the transition, and at the
same time simultaneously you upgraded to the more recent refreshes of the HP products to do
that.
So, this was literally changing the wings on the airplane when it was still flying. Tell me why
doing it all at once was a good thing.

4. Chennaian: It was the fact that we were able to leverage the additional functionality that the HP
suite of products provide. We were able to deliver application availability,
ensure a timeframe for the migration and leverage the ability to use
automation tools that HP provides. With Quick Test Professional for
example, we migrated from 9.5 to 10.0, and we were able to leverage the
functionality with business process testing from a Quality Center
standpoint.
As a whole, from an application lifecycle management and from an
enterprise-wide QA and testing standpoint, it allowed us to ensure system
availability and QA on a timely basis. So, it made sense to upgrade as we
were undergoing this transformation.
Cooper: Good point, Kirthy. In addition to upgrading our tools and so forth, we also upgraded
many of the servers to some of the latest Itanium technology. We also implemented a lot of the
state-of-the-art virtualization services offered by HP, and some of the other partners as well.
Streamlined process
Using HP tools, we were able to create a regression test set for each of our Tier 1 applications in
a standard way and a performance test for each one of the applications. So, we were able to
streamline our whole QA process as a side-benefit of the data migration, building out these state-
of-the-art data centers, and IT modernization.
Gardner: So, this really affected operations. You changed some platforms, you adopted the
higher levels of virtualization, you're injecting quality into your apps, and you're moving them
into an entirely new facility. That's very impressive, but it's not just me being impressed. You've
won a People's Choice Award, voted by peers of the HP software community and their Customer
Advisory Board. That must have felt pretty good.
Cooper: It feels excellent. In 2009, we won the IT Transformation Award. So, this isn't our first
time to the party. That was for a different project. I think that in the community people know
who we are and what we're capable of. It's really an honor that the people who are our peers, who
read over the different submissions, decided that we were the ones that were at the top.
Gardner: And I hear that you've won some other awards as well.
Cooper: We've won lots of awards, but that's not what we do it for. The reason why we do the
awards is for the team. It's a big morale builder for the team. Everybody is working hard. Some
of these project people work night and day to get them done, and the proof of the pudding is the
recognition by the industry.
Honestly, we also couldn't do without great executive support. Our CIO has a high belief in
quality and really supports us in doing this. It's nice that we've got the industry recognition as
well.

5. Gardner: Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You've got some metrics here.
They were pretty impressive in turns of availability, cost savings, reduction in execution time,
performance and stability improvements, and higher systems availability. Give me a sense, from
an IT perspective, if you were to go to some other organization, not in the carrier business, of
course, and tell them what this really did for you, performance and in the metrics that count to IT,
what would you tell them?
Cooper: The metrics I can speak to are from the QA perspective. We were able to do the testing
and we never missed one of the testing deadlines. We cut our testing time using HP tools by
about 50 percent through automation and we can pretty accurately measure that. We probably
have about 30 percent savings in the testing, but the best part of it is the availability. But, because
of the sensitive nature and competitive marketplace, we're not going to talk exactly about what
our availability is.
Gardner: And how about your particular point of pride on this one, Kirthy?
Chennaian: For one, being able to get recognized is an acknowledgement of all the work you
do, and for your organization as a whole. Mike rightly pointed out that it boosts the morale of the
organization. It also enables you to perform at a higher level. So, it's definitely a significant
acknowledgment, and I'm very excited that we actually won the People's Choice Award.
Gardner: A number of other organizations and other series of industries are going to be facing
the same kind of a situation, where it's not just going to be a slow, iterative improvement
process,. They're going to have to go catalytic and make wholesale changes in the data center,
looking for that efficiency benefit.
You've done that. You've improved on your QA and applications lifecycle benefits at the same
time. With that 20-20 hindsight, what would you have done differently, or at least what could you
advise people who are going to face a similar large, complex, and multifaceted undertaking?
Planning and strategy
Chennaian: If I were to do this again, I think there is definitely a significant opportunity with
respect to planning and investing in the overall strategy of QA and testing for such a significant
transformation. There has to be a standard methodology. You have to have the right toolsets in
place. You have to plan for the entire transformation as a whole. Those are significant elements in
successful transformation.
Gardner: Monday morning quarterback for you, Michael?
Cooper: We did a lot of things right. One of the things that we did right was to augment our
team. We didn’t try to do the ongoing work with the exact same team. We brought in some extra

6. specialists to work with us or to back-fill in some places. Other groups didn’t and paid the price,
but that part worked out for us.
Also, it helped to have a seat at the table and say, "It's great to do a technology upgrade, but
unless we really have the customer point of view and focus on the quality, you're not going to
have success."
We were lucky enough to have that executive support and the seat at the table, to really have the
go/no-go decisions. I don't think we really missed one in terms of ones that we said, "We
shouldn't do it this time. Let's do it next time." Or, ones where we said, "Let's go." I can't
remember even one application we had to roll back. Overall, it was very good. The other thing is,
work with the right tools and the right partners.
Gardner: With data center transformation, after all, it's all about the apps. You were able to
maintain that focus. You didn’t lose focus of the apps?
Cooper: Definitely.The applications do a couple of things. One, the ones that support the
customers directly. Those have to have really high availability, and we're able to speed them up
quite a bit with the newest and the latest hardware.
The other part are the apps that people don't think about that much, which are the ones that
support the front lines, the ones that support retail and customer care and so forth. I would say
that our business customers or internal customers have also really benefited from this project.
Gardner: Well great. We've been talking about a massive undertaking with data center
transformation and application QA and lifecycle improvements and the result was a People's
Choice Award won here at the Discover Show in Las Vegas. It's T-Mobile. They're the winner.
We've been talking with their representatives here. Michael Cooper, the Senior Director of
Enterprise IT Quality Assurance. Thanks again, Michael.
Cooper: Thank you, and we're very proud of the team.
Gardner: We are also here with Kirthy Chennaian, the Director of Enterprise IT Quality
Management at T-Mobile. Thanks.
Chennaian: Thank you. Very excited to be here.
Gardner: And thanks to our audience for joining this special BriefingsDirect podcast coming to
you from the HP Discover 2011 Conference. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor
Solutions, your host for this series of User Experience Discussions. Thanks again for listening,
and come back next time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor:
HP

7. Transcript of a BriefingsDirect podcast on how communications company T-Mobile improved
application quality, while setting up two data centers. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC,
2005-2011. All rights reserved.
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