Four times zero makes for happy customers

The number zero has a bad image. It's often linked to things that are negative, like zero success, zero return or people’s mood hitting zero. Yet the zero also stands for a lot of positive things: It's the starting point for various scales and an important part of the binary system. It also plays a greater role in a company's success than people might assume. I would even go so far as to say that four times zero is what makes for happy customers. I call this formula for success the "Zero Principle":

There's no stopping the digitization of our economy. It does not only change individual processes, but also entire business models. According to a study published in March of this year by the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), 72 percent of companies consider digital transformation the biggest task they face, immediately after covering the need for skilled labor (73 percent). And 40 percent of the managing directors and board members surveyed are convinced that "competitors who turned to digitization early on have the edge on them." A secure, stable and efficient IT infrastructure is an indispensable prerequisite for the successful digital transformation of companies. It ensures that production lines run day and night, that the online shop is open around the clock, and that shares can be traded worldwide in real time. Even innovations like autonomous driving or the use of robots in operating rooms are inconceivable without reliable ICT systems.

1) Zero critical downtime

 Nevertheless, this kind of reliability doesn't appear from nowhere. Ensuring quality, security and efficiency in information and communication technology is a demanding management task that has to take a wide range of components into account. First of all, it must ensure the reliability of ongoing ICT operations, in other words, Zero Outage. Since these ICT systems are becoming increasingly complex and extensive, less is more. It's all about reducing complexity, because complexity is the natural enemy of reliability. Accordingly, anyone who wants stable ICT operations has to standardize: their processes, their technical platforms, and even their personnel. The latter can be achieved through regular, mandatory training to ensure that all the employees in a given area of responsibility have the same level of know-how. Stable operation also needs a stable technology base, such as genuinely redundant data centers. And if a disruption does still occur – as we all know there is no IT without any incidents at all – a kind of "emergency team" should be available to quickly get the systems up and running again: around the clock, seven days a week. That's the kind of standard we have today. And it's not only given us availability of up to 99.999 percent and a seal of approval by the German monitoring service TüV Rheinland, but also the highest customer satisfaction rating in our company's history. And in our next step, we want get together with renowned hardware and software partners to make Zero Outage a global industry standard.

 2) Zero avoidable flaw

Project expertise is another important component. We at T-Systems refer to this as Zero Failure. Today's CIOs have to master a balancing act: On the one hand, as described above, ensure reliable ICT operations and, on the other, develop innovative solutions and continuously drive forward the digitization of their company. Cloud-based solutions can help achieve that, but the route to the cloud is a source of worry for many CIOs. They understandably shy away from the huge integration effort. In some cases, up to several thousand individual applications have to be migrated. Many of these are business-critical, and not all of them are cloud-ready. And even if migrating these applications succeeds as planned, who can promise the CIO that all the systems will work reliably afterwards? Here, too, the magic word is "standardization" – standardized applications instead of proprietary solutions that sooner or later no-one can keep track of. But even the best cloud services can't consolidate existing applications for you and migrate or replace the ones you need. This is where extensive know-how and a proven zero-error approach during systems integration is called for. However, you don't become a "cloudifier overnight," as PAC analyst Andreas Zilch knows. "Applications, legacy data and the cloud first need to be brought together." Over the past ten years, our integration experts (now some 4,000 of them) have supported around 250 transformations into the cloud. And our new "Cloudifier" service helps companies by paving the way into the cloud from end to end. What's special about it are the standardized service packages at fixed prices.

 3) Zero negative consequences

Zero Impact, the third component, stands for preventing the rise in cyber criminality from having any negative impact on a company's ICT operations. Hacker attacks quickly lead to loss of data or system outage, both of which have far-reaching consequences. Painful losses worth millions or sustained damage to a company's reputation are not uncommon. According to Bitkom, data theft, sabotage and digital espionage cost the German economy EUR 51 billion annually. In a worst-case scenario, such activities may even cost lives – for example, if a connected car is hacked while driving down the street or the ICT systems in an airport tower fail. As a result, protecting digital infrastructure against internal and external attacks is more important than ever, and no company these days can afford to do without a comprehensive security concept. This starts by including cyber protection in your design and developing products that are secure from the outset. A regular software update prevents unnecessary loopholes for attackers. And modern security solutions and encryption techniques can make life more difficult for hackers. Every CIO must also be highly selective when it comes to entrusting sensitive business data to others. Deutsche Telekom has decades of experience in the field of ICT security. After all, we have been protecting our own business against attacks for more than 20 years. Over 1,000 Telekom employees deal exclusively with security issues and fight off up to five million attacks from the Internet every day. We operate high-security data centers like the Data Center Campus in Biere. And with Magenta Security we offer the right security solution for any business ranging from sole proprietorships to mid-sized companies or major international corporations. Always under the motto: easy to understand, easy to operate, and easy to use.

 4) Zero unnecessary handling

 Last but not least, companies need Zero Touch in order to be successful, in other words: the extensive automation of business-related ICT processes. This extends to the vision of data centers that virtually manage themselves without the need for any manual intervention. The benefits of automation are clear: More efficiency means more savings – potentially up to 50 percent. As a result, you can get more done with the same number of people. A faster response time saves costs and creates room for new business opportunities. Having fewer manual interfaces minimizes errors and significantly improves operational quality. Business processes are speeded up - indeed, some of them are only possible as a result of automation. Because of the degree of automation in our cloud data center in Biere, for example, its server rooms are almost devoid of people. We can run the entire campus with ten people for the IT and ten more for the building technology. Automation is also good for energy efficiency. With a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.3, Biere sets a global benchmark. In addition, consistent automation provides the foundation for our flexible and high-quality product portfolio. Here's just one example: When a sales manager used to sell a service in the past, it was prepared and made available manually or semi-automatically. Thanks to automation, today's customers can compile and configure their ICT system entirely on their own, in much the same way as the long-established configuration of cars in the automotive sector.

Together, Zero Outage, Zero Failure, Zero Impact and Zero Touch form the "Zero Principle", which is what it takes to be successful over the long term in today's digital world: Zero outage in ICT operations, zero preventable failures in implementing transformation projects, zero negative impact on the ICT infrastructure from cyber attacks, and zero unnecessary manual interventions that provoke errors and drive up costs. The bottom line: Four times zero makes for happy customers and enables the successful digitization of industry on the whole. Our "Zero Principle" is not only essential for large customers, but can also be applied to SMEs and private customers. As you can see, in this context the number zero is extremely positive. Maybe the time has come to appreciate it a bit more.

About the author: Dr. Ferri Abolhassan initiated the "Zero Outage" quality program at T-Systems in 2011. He now wants to turn this approach into an industry standard. His new book "Security. Simply. Make it happen. IT security as the springboard for digitization" with practical articles by experts from business, politics and society will be published in October by Springer-Gabler.