![\"T-Mobile's](\"https:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/from-hackathons-to-new-products-northwest-neighbors-t-mobile-and-microsoft-team-up-to-innovate.jpg\")
\u201cWe were able to leave our normal responsibilities behind and just come together,\u201d she says. \u201cIt created this place where you have these great relationships and get to work collaboratively on a common problem. That\u2019s a lot harder to create in a normal work week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt increased the sense of community within T-Mobile once we got back to our day jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
T-Mobile has long used Microsoft technologies in its products and services, but the relationship between the two companies has recently evolved into a true partnership, says Gina Kirby, a senior Azure specialist who works closely with T-Mobile.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has always been a synergy between the two companies, but we hadn\u2019t necessarily dug in so deep as to build things together,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
That changed about three years ago, when T-Mobile sought to use blockchain technology, which allows digital information to be distributed but not copied, to improve security for internal identity management. T-Mobile reached out to Microsoft about its Azure platform capabilities \u2014 and specifically its enterprise blockchain service, which was created to help businesses build applications on top of blockchain technology.<\/p>\n
T-Mobile had been working alongside Intel, another Microsoft partner, on the Next Identity Platform, an open source blockchain-based identity governance platform. The T-Mobile team wanted to ensure the integration with Microsoft\u2019s technologies was both technically advanced and operationally mature. To further those goals, Microsoft hosted a \u201ccode with\u201d event at its campus, where teams from the two companies worked together for a week to develop solutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing the team into Microsoft\u2019s innovation space and sitting side by side with their experts allowed us to rapidly accelerate developing system designs, data flows and ultimately production-quality code,\u201d says Chris Spanton, principal architect of emerging technology strategy for T-Mobile. \u201cWe were able to solve complex technical challenges and in the process, develop lasting relationships and a deep sense of co-ownership over the outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft also worked with T-Mobile around the 2016 launch of T-Mobile Tuesdays, a customer appreciation app that offers weekly promotions, freebies and a chance to win prizes. The offers are limited to certain hours of the day, which led to traffic spikes that threatened to overload T-Mobile\u2019s platform.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes we had challenges when we couldn\u2019t handle the traffic loads that we get on Tuesdays,\u201d says Abigail Franco, director of Product & Technology at T-Mobile, who previously oversaw the T-Mobile Tuesdays team.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the first few weeks, we had the Microsoft team at T-Mobile 24\/7. Microsoft was there with us and helped us get back on our feet. That was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n More recently, Franco says, Microsoft is partnering with T-Mobile to upgrade its Azure-based platform to handle an anticipated uptick in T-Mobile Tuesdays participation following the Sprint merger.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been trying to build knowledge in-house to make sure we can support our Azure solution, but it\u2019s not the same as having the expertise from Microsoft to guide us through the process, provide best practices, tell us specific areas we should look out for and give us recommendations on how to test various scenarios and proof-of-concepts before we start building a solution,\u201d Franco says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been immensely helpful to have the Microsoft team support and help us with that effort.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In 2018, T-Mobile launched a new event aimed at raising awareness about data science and identifying budding data scientists within the company. Datapalooza brings together about 150 data scientists, software engineers, and data and business analysts who work together in teams to solve specific problems with generic data sets over two days.<\/p>\n T-Mobile\u2019s data-analytics platform is built on Azure, and Microsoft provides training to Datapalooza participants on using the platform in the weeks leading up to the event. Microsoft engineers are also on-site during Datapalooza to assist teams and serve as judges.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s experience with large hackathons helped shape T-Mobile\u2019s event, leading to the addition of mentors and other details, says BK Vasan, T-Mobile\u2019s director of data engineering and advanced data analytics.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were thinking about something small, but Microsoft partnering with us helped us shape this into something bigger,\u201d he says. \u201cThat partnership is very fundamental for T-Mobile. We were able to show the entire division that we have a scalable platform we can run advanced analytics on. At the same time, we were able to rapidly provision the platform for multiple users in less than a day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019s a powerful statement that we were able to make in partnership with Microsoft,\u201d Vasan says. \u201cThat gave us confidence, not only for my team, but also the senior leadership in terms of yes, we do have a viable platform for advanced analytics.\u201d<\/p>\n That platform, he says, eventually became T-Mobile\u2019s advanced analytics platform, T-Insights, used by more than 10 of the company\u2019s teams.<\/p>\n Beyond Datapalooza, Microsoft has provided input on using Azure for advanced data analytics, IoT and marketing initiatives, Vasan says. \u201cWe do a lot of visioning with Microsoft in terms of tech strategy for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Like much of life in the U.S. at the moment, both companies\u2019 work has shifted during the coronavirus pandemic. An Azure-focused hackathon that T-Mobile and Microsoft were planning is now on hold, and Microsoft\u2019s global Hackathon is going fully virtual this year.<\/p>\n Still, Kirby says Microsoft envisions its partnership with T-Mobile as a long-term effort, and T-Mobile plans to put together a team to participate virtually in this year\u2019s global Hackathon. This time around, T-Mobile will be exploring how Microsoft technology can help the company create even more inclusive user experiences for employees and customers with physical disabilities.<\/p>\n For Garg, who worked for Microsoft from 2006 to 2011, the pet tracker collaboration gave him a new perspective on his former employer. Microsoft\u2019s evolution into a \u201ccustomer-first company\u201d was evident in its team\u2019s approach of focusing first on what the product needed to do for T-Mobile\u2019s customers, then determining what technologies met those priorities, he says. And it underscored Microsoft\u2019s cultural shift under CEO Satya Nadella to a new era of collaboration.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I think about my relationship with Microsoft, it\u2019s not a customer-vendor relationship. It really does feel like a partnership,\u201d Garg says. \u201cIt feels like a relationship of friends that are trying to solve shared objectives.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Microsoft, it\u2019s never about, \u2018I\u2019m trying to sell you something.\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u2018How am I going to help use the set of things I have to solve your customer problem?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Top photo: A very good dog shows off a T-Mobile SyncUP PETS tracker. (Photo courtesy of T-Mobile)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The collaboration is part of a broader partnership between T-Mobile and Microsoft that has grown over the past few years as T-Mobile, which merged with Sprint in April, has sought to disrupt the wireless industry and establish itself as a product-focused innovator. Those efforts culminated most visibly at Microsoft\u2019s global Hackathon last July, when an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[298],"class_list":["post-115919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-news","tag-transform"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/from-hackathons-to-new-products-northwest-neighbors-t-mobile-and-microsoft-team-up-to-innovate-1.jpg\")
![\"T-Mobile's](\"https:\/\/www.sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/from-hackathons-to-new-products-northwest-neighbors-t-mobile-and-microsoft-team-up-to-innovate-2.jpg\")