Berlin, over 30 degrees Celsius. The IT expertise hits home. At the end of May, T-Systems was present at Germany's most renowned DevOps conference: DevOpsCon. Amid summer temperatures, the industry meeting lived up to its reputation and once again proved to be the ideal platform for the exchange of ideas between IT experts from across the world. "We used the two days intensively to convince in person the people who actually end up using our products and services and thus influencing decisions in favor of T-Systems," says Bernd Rederlechner, cloud architect and chief technologist at T-Systems.

The company took the opportunity to present its end-to-end cloud solutions to visitors to the stand, using concrete examples. "The IT experts approached us directly with specific tasks," says Rederlechner about the trade fair. "We then demonstrated live solutions at the stand, showing how our complementary cloud products combined with DevOps methods work quickly and reliably.” The new EU data protection regulation (GDPR) played a particularly important role for the Europeans attending DevOpsCon. T-Systems can score with a unique selling point here due to its certified, fully German data centers, which operate the public Open Telekom Cloud, for example.

A highlight of the conference was the presentation by Bernd Rederlechner and Veronika Lawrence, a cloud consultant at T-Systems. In front of an audience of around 100 people, they discussed the advantages and disadvantages of DevOps for the software deployment of corporate IT. Faster is not always better, Lawrence emphasized: "It is essential for business success to find the balance between value and speed.” The lively presentation led to a spirited discussion, which was then continued by the audience members and the speakers throughout the afternoon at the stand.

Martin Grether: I'm impressed. Unlike other events, we had the chance here to meet and talk with IT experts "from the engine room" – and these were more than mere sales talks. Usually we quickly dived in and became immersed at the development or administration level in order to find answers to the concrete questions together.

Martin Grether: Especially now, of course, data protection is a major issue due to the GDPR. As a German company with certified data centers in Germany, we were able to demonstrate our strengths here. At the same time, there’s a need for comprehensive solutions. For example, our Cloudifier to move applications to the cloud, or DevOps as a service. Perfectly complemented by the Open Telekom Cloud as an agile platform – we definitely aroused the visitors’ interest with this.  

Martin Grether: Lots of interesting insights from discussions and valuable contacts. We managed to meet the participants on an equal footing – regardless of whether they are a big company, a SME or a start-up. We were able to allay any concerns and for all these companies we recommended ourselves as a strategic partner for cloud solutions.