Case study
From platform builders to culture architects:
500 apps in production
.jpg)
Building a high-performance platform is the easy part - the real challenge is transforming how hundreds of engineers think about software delivery without disrupting operations.
Starting point
The telecommunications industry operates under a paradox: companies manage some of the world's most sophisticated networks, yet often struggle to deliver software with the speed their customers expect. While startups launch features in days, established telecom players can spend months navigating internal processes and legacy constraints.
Telecom Italia recognized this gap between their technical capabilities and market demands. They had the engineering talent and infrastructure, but their software delivery model was designed for a different era - one where releases happened quarterly, not continuously. Their existing systems prioritized stability over agility, making it challenging to launch data-driven digital services at the pace the market demanded.
The company identified an opportunity to build a foundational data platform that could support modern development practices while maintaining the reliability their business required. However, they understood that technology alone wouldn't solve the challenge - the real transformation would need to happen in how teams approached software delivery.
Embedded, not a vendor: How we built a self‑sufficient platform with Telecom Italia
Approach
Rather than delivering a turnkey platform and walking away, we embedded ourselves within Telecom Italia's engineering organization. Our strategy centered on knowledge transfer through direct collaboration - working alongside their engineers through pair programming to solve real production challenges while teaching modern development approaches.
We focused on three parallel tracks: building robust technical infrastructure, shifting organizational culture toward DevOps practices, and ensuring continuous platform reliability. The technical foundation included a cache layer protecting core systems and ensuring high availability, while the cultural shift involved moving teams away from traditional siloed approaches toward cross-functional collaboration.
Our consultants worked daily with internal teams and transformation leaders to drive this change practically, not theoretically. We provided 24/7 platform support to build confidence, delivered focused training in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, and platform operations, and most importantly- demonstrated new approaches by doing, not just teaching.
The goal was to create self-sufficiency: a platform Telecom Italia's teams could operate, maintain, and evolve independently.
Breaking The Linear
We inverted the consultant-client relationship. Instead of building the platform for Telecom Italia, we built it with them. Every architectural decision, every line of infrastructure code, every operational procedure was created through pair programming and collaborative problem-solving. When issues arose in production, we didn't fix them alone - we solved them together with Telecom Italia engineers, ensuring they gained the expertise to handle similar situations independently.
Transforming delivery: Building capabilities and culture
Summary
We transformed Telecom Italia from an organization building a platform into an organization that fundamentally changed how it delivers software. This wasn't a technology deployment project - it was a capability-building initiative that reshaped engineering culture.
The company now operates a production environment supporting over 500 applications, but the numbers only tell part of the story. The real transformation is visible in how teams approach software delivery: they moved from sequential, approval-heavy processes to collaborative, iterative development. They shifted from viewing platform infrastructure as a constraint to seeing it as an enabler of innovation.
Most significantly, we established a new trajectory for howTelecom Italia competes in the market. They moved from asking "how can we adapt our processes to deliver faster?" to "what new services can we launch now that we have the platform and practices to support rapid innovation?" The platform became the foundation, but the cultural shift became their competitive advantage.
.webp)