Challenge

Today, telecom companies are facing tremendous competitive pressures. Despite its position as a market leader, Deutsche Telekom is not immune: The company needed to find ways to engage customers and create new revenue streams. Given Deutsche Telekom’s sizable SME customer base, offering a marketplace for these cloud services seemed like an ideal next step for the company.

Solution

At first, Deutsche Telekom explored the option of developing an in-house solution. “We quickly came to the conclusion that we weren’t able to develop the technology on our own,” says Lutz Fröhlich, the company’s Senior Vice President for Cloud Services. “Our own development would take us two to three years, so we said we need to work with a partner.”

After evaluating several providers, Deutsche Telekom decided to partner with AppDirect. “From our perspective, we found the AppDirect solution to be the most promising,” says André Zehl, Vice President Cloud Portal Business Marketplace.

To outpace the competition, the Deutsche Telekom team knew that it would need to quickly expand its application catalog. For this reason, AppDirect’s agility and ability to quickly onboard new cloud services was critical. “We looked for a partner who is agile and open,” says Fröhlich. “No one knows exactly where the market is heading, so the fact that AppDirect can adapt to changing needs is very important to us.”

Results

Working with AppDirect, Deutsche Telekom was able to launch the first version of its Business Marketplace in only three months. After launch, the company quickly progressed to the next stage: expanding its offerings. With streamlined onboarding through the AppDirect Developer Portal, Deutsche Telekom was able to bring over 40 new cloud services to market in just 12 months.