15
February
2022
|
14:48
Europe/London

BT’s Digital unit signs £30m deal with tech workforce platform Distributed to accelerate its transformation

●        First of its kind contract accelerates BT’s digital transformation and innovation agenda

●        The partnership will see Distributed provide on-demand, Elastic Teams™️ in AI, cloud, product, design and more for BT Digital

●        The deal highlights BT’s commitment to working with top talent and growing the digital start-up ecosystem

15th February 2022. BT Digital today announces it has signed a £30m deal with Distributed, a company providing access to on-demand Elastic Teams™ of technology professionals to enable BT to better serve its customers. This resource will empower BT to accelerate its digital transformation and innovation agenda by rapidly bringing together multi-skilled digital teams, enabling the business to build high-quality digital products and platforms faster and more efficiently.

The Distributed contract, the first of its kind for BT, secures a board seat and an equity stake in the business.

Crucially, the deal allows BT to be able to access a new pool of talented and highly skilled tech professionals, giving the opportunity to work on transformational projects remotely and for varied durations. This is vital to meeting BT’s ambitious transformation goals. Distributed’s Elastic TeamsTM offer the ability to source and deploy highly skilled, globally dispersed tech talent at both scale and speed.

Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT Digital said “Our work with cutting-edge start-ups like Distributed will help us extend our internal pool of talent, accelerate the digital revolution within BT and help to make BT, and the UK, a key hub for the digital innovation economy.”

Mark Murphy, Director of HR, Technology Units at BT will be taking the board seat at Distributed. Mark said, “Distributed’s Elastic TeamsTM approach is closely aligned with our mission of building an agile and innovative digital company. This partnership creates another avenue for us to attract great talent who share our ‘Digital Way’ philosophy and approach to work.” The Digital Way is a set of principles, behaviours and practices that will embed a digital mindset in the company, helping BT deliver its digital strategy by boosting productivity and reducing costs.

Cal Adamson, CEO & Co-founder of Distributed said, “Our partnership represents a huge milestone in the use of on-demand talent within enterprise and demonstrates BT’s strategic foresight and commitment to providing the very best outcomes for their customers. This partnership will allow BT to engage the very best talent the world has to offer and will supercharge our mission to deliver independent careers with more benefits than permanent employment through Distributed’s Elastic Team™️ platform.”

The Distributed partnership is the first output from BT Digital’s start-up amplifier, which aims to grow and scale start-ups with investment, industry knowledge and strategic support.

About BT

BT Group is the UK’s leading telecommunications and network provider and a leading provider of global communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Its principal activities in the UK include the provision of fixed voice, mobile, broadband and TV (including Sport) and a range of products and services over converged fixed and mobile networks to consumer, business and public sector customers. For its global customers, BT provides managed services, security and network and IT infrastructure services to support their operations all over the world. BT consists of four customer-facing units: Consumer, Enterprise, Global and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Openreach, which provides access network services to over 650 communications provider customers who sell phone, broadband and Ethernet services to homes and businesses across the UK.

For the year ended 31 March 2021, BT Group’s reported revenue was £21,331m with reported profit before taxation of £1,804m.

British Telecommunications plc is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

For more information, visit www.bt.com/about

About Distributed

Distributed is a technology workforce company founded in 2017, on the belief that the businesses of the future will thrive without the need for technical development teams-in-residence. Through the Distributed platform, clients have on-demand access to Elastic Teams™️ - fully managed, globally distributed teams of technical staff – as easily as a local workforce. This allows them to build and maintain software to a higher standard – faster, safer and with more visibility than ever before. Distributed operates a remote-first model and is proud to champion remote working and independent careers for its employees and Elastic Teams™️.

 In 2021, Distributed was named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the UK’s 50 fastest-growing technology companies, months after its Series A funding round. The company also received the Outstanding Reward & Recognition Award from The Omnis for excellence as a ‘remote work hero’, and was a winner in Red Herring’s Europe’s Top 100 list – a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs that has previously featured the likes of Facebook, Google and Salesforce. Find out more about Distributed here https://www.distributed.co/