{"id":21178,"date":"2022-12-06T00:47:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T00:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/q-t-mobile-creates-digital-commerce-platform-with-headless-apis-for-cloud-native-platform\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T00:47:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T00:47:28","slug":"q-t-mobile-creates-digital-commerce-platform-with-headless-apis-for-cloud-native-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/06\/q-t-mobile-creates-digital-commerce-platform-with-headless-apis-for-cloud-native-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&: T-Mobile creates digital commerce platform with ‘headless APIs’ for cloud-native platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

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T-Mobile USA Inc., who has branded itself as the \u201cun-carrier,\u201d is now poised to be a leader in the U.S. in telephone communications.<\/p>\n

The telco has done this by creating a\u00a0digital commerce domain that runs a digital commerce platform with a set of application platform interfaces \u2014 referred to by T-Mobile as \u201cheadless APIs,\u201d according to\u00a0Glen Kurisingal<\/a> (pictured, right), director of product and technology at T-Mobile.\u00a0This seemingly simple digital experience empowers everyday customers to quickly and easily complete their shopping transactions \u2014 and it was\u00a0T-Mobile\u2019s first tier-one system to go 100% cloud-native.<\/p>\n

So far, T-Mobile\u2019s strategy seems to be working. Just this year, the company processed over 3 1\/2 million orders, amounting to a billion and a half dollars worth of business for T-Mobile.<\/p>\n

So how did this journey come about?\u00a0Kurisingal\u00a0and\u00a0Nicholas Criss<\/a> (pictured, left), senior manager for product and technology at T-Mobile,\u00a0spoke with theCUBE industry analysts\u00a0Lisa Martin<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Dave Vellante<\/a> at\u00a0AWS re:Invent<\/a>, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media\u2019s livestreaming studio.\u00a0(* Disclosure below.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

They discussed the details behind T-Mobile\u2019s cloud-native digital commerce platform and how customers are enjoying such a digitally-savvy telco.\u00a0<\/span>[The following content has been condensed for clarity.]<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Vellante: When you talk about \u2018headless APIs\u2019 \u2026 you\u2019re talking about a loosely coupled system that you can evolve without bringing the whole system down. Can you explain that in a little bit more detail? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Kurisingal:\u00a0So the concept of [headless APIs] \u2026 allows us to build and operate a platform that runs \u2026 loosely coupled from the user experiences. So when you think about this from a simplistic standpoint, you have a set of APIs that are headless, and you\u2019ve got the website that connects to it, the retail store applications that connect to it, as well as the customer care applications that connect to it. Eessentially, what that does is it allows us to basically operate all these platforms without being tightly coupled to each other.<\/p>\n

Vellante: Could you\u00a0guys could talk about what the genesis was for this system?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kurisingal: We started this journey back in 2016, and at that point T-Mobile had seven or eight different commerce platforms. We\u2019ve talked about T-Mobile being the \u2018uncarrier.\u2019 It\u2019s a brand that we have basically popularized in the telco industry. We would come out with these massive uncarrier moves, and every time that announcement was made, teams have to scramble \u2014 because \u2026 every single system needs to be updated. So that\u2019s where we started when we kicked off this transformational journey. Over time, we have brought it down\u00a0to one platform that supports all these experiences.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Vellante: Are you leaning into to serverless and AWS Lambda?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kurisingal:\u00a0<\/span>Back in 2016 when we started, we were all on [AWS\u2019s EC2s] and \u2026 over the last three or four years, we have \u2026 gone through that journey where we went from EC2 to containers. At some point, we\u2019ll get to where we will be serverless. We\u2019ve got a few functions running, but \u2026 we are somewhere towards the process of \u2026 going from \u2026 containers to serverless.<\/p>\n

Vellante: What does your team look like, and what are the skill sets that you\u2019ve got that you\u2019re deploying?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Criss: One of the things that really has helped us is we\u2019ve had a partner. So [UST<\/a>] is a digital services company, and they\u2019ve really \u2026 been on the journey the same timeline that we were. And when I came to the [T-Mobile] commerce team, we were really struggling, especially from that operational perspective. The team was just not adapting to that new cloud reality.<\/p>\n

But we brought [UST] in, because not only were they really able to understand the stuff, but they had built a lot of the platforms that we were going to be leveraging for commerce with us on the cloud team. So, not only did these folks have the right skill sets, but they knew how we were approaching it from a T-Mobile cloud perspective.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE\u2019s and theCUBE\u2019s coverage of <\/span>AWS re:Invent<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n