US Telecom Leader Leverages Sutherland’s Digital Engineering Solutions to Drive Digital Transformation

Industry: Communications, Media, and Entertainment | Services: Digital Engineering Services

Client Overview

A major U.S. telecommunications company, offering core services in wireless, broadband, and digital entertainment, with tens of millions of subscribers and a need to continually modernize infrastructure and customer experiences.

The Challenge

Legacy Complexity, Spiraling Costs, and Slow Release Cycles

The client faced escalating complexity in its legacy application stack, fragmented systems, overlapping licenses, and inefficiencies from manual processes. Its existing pace of change was too slow to respond to competitive pressures and digital demands. They needed a partner to overhaul architecture, streamline operations, adopt modern dev practices, and drive cost discipline.

Sutherland Solution

SAIL framework to transform, modernize and scale digital engineering
Sutherland structured the engagement using its SAIL (Stabilize, Automate, Innovate, Launch) roadmap:

• Stabilize:
  • IT Asset Management and Rationalization: We audited the client’s IT assets, reducing application Opex by 40% and eliminating unnecessary license costs, freeing up budget for strategic investments.
  • Agile Foundation: Scaled Agile delivery with close collaboration between onsite and offshore teams, increasing productivity by 308% from 2018 to 2023 and achieving a 12–16-day average release cycle time.
    
• Automate:
  • QE Engineering Automation: Enhanced Quality Engineering by integrating SOA service APIs into tests and automating testing with an API-based suite, resulting in faster issue identification, better product quality, and reduced time to market.
  • DevOps Implementation: Our DevOps strategy includes continuous integration and containerized builds using Kubernetes, which improves development agility, reduces cycle times, and increases system reliability.
  • Microservices Architecture: Adopted a microservices approach, enabling independent scaling, development, and deployment, reducing system-wide outage risks and fostering faster innovation.
  • Elevating Digital Presence: Overhauled the client’s digital presence with integrated AEM and Angular applications, enhancing customer engagement and reinforcing their digital leadership.
    
• Innovate:.
  • Tech Stack Modernization: Migrated monolithic applications to a cloud-native microservices architecture on AWS, leading to a 35% reduction in Opex, 22% decrease in total cost of ownership, and a doubling of release cycle speed.
  • IT Infrastructure Transformation: Modernized IT infrastructure by migrating 75% of workloads to AWS Cloud, automating 50% of manual SOPs, and achieving 99.99% platform stability with zero major incidents in 20+ releases.
  • Proactive Churn Management and Fraud Prevention: Implemented an AWS Data Lake for real-time access to a Customer Golden Record and ML-driven insights. This reduced churn and prevented $200 million in annual fraudulent losses.
    
• Launch:.
  • CX Transformation and Digital Care: Unified user experience across 10+ channels, resulting in a 70% boost in campaign effectiveness, 45% more personalized offers, and a 20% reduction in customer churn, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty.

The Outcome

Digital outcomes engineered — vast productivity, cost, and growth gains

Through the Sutherland SAIL-driven transformation, the client realized a 308% productivity gain, slashed application Opex by 40%, and achieved a 22% reduction in TCO via cloud-native infrastructure. Release cycles stabilized at 12–16 days, with over 20 major releases executed without incident. Campaign effectiveness soared by 70%, personalized offer conversions increased by 45%, and customer churn declined by 20%. This holistic engineering and CX overhaul proved transformational—delivering measurable business impact across cost, speed, and growth.