AT&T's IT department last year introduced Interactive Advantage, a Web-management platform that lets business customers view performance reports on voice and data services, as well as report service troubles, test WAN circuits, and check the status of ordered data services. About 17,000 customers now use Interactive Advantage.

"Interactive Advantage is successful because we've upgraded our legacy systems to allow the transactions that customers submit over the Web to flow through automatically into the maintenance and provisioning systems," says AT&T CIO Alan Jones.

New forms of competition and cooperation also pose challenges for telecom IT departments. Now that long-distance providers are bundling charges for local services into their bills and local-service providers are trying to break into the long-distance market, telecom IT departments have to interact and communicate with potential competitors and partners in ways they never had to in the past. Most notably, the ordering, provisioning, and billing systems that one telecom company uses must interface with those used by another in order to provide customers with a single service and bill.

"It's almost an extended supply-chain problem," says AT&T's Jones. "Even when they are trying their best and we are trying our best, it's a hard technical problem."

Consolidation Issues
This is an important issue for Sprint, which relies on the digital subscriber line services offered by local providers to extend its Integrated Online Network's broadband service to residential users. However, if each local provider implements a different DSL provisioning system, Sprint's IT department will have to develop multiple interfaces as it rolls out the network to different geographic areas.

"As we automate our systems, one of our major concerns is that we can't be sure how automated the Bell companies are on their end," Huber says. "There hasn't been an industry forum that standardizes DSL order forms that all Bells adhere to."

Industry consolidation is posing another problem-combining overlapping IT departments, according to Craig Johnson, principal at the Pita Group, a consulting firm. In some cases, the task isn't that difficult, such as the planned merger between long-distance company Qwest Communications Inc. and local service provider US West. "They are both based in Denver, which will make it easier from an operational perspective to pull the departments together," Johnson says.

But other companies face a more difficult challenge. Because of acquisitions, SBC's IT departments grew almost overnight from 3,200 staffers based mostly in Dallas and St. Louis to more than 8,000 employees spread throughout the United States. If the merger with Ameritech is completed, SBC's IT department may grow to as many as 12,000 employees.

An operation of that size means that communicating IT initiatives, priorities, and other matters is more urgent-and more difficult-than ever, Glotzbach says. That's why he regularly tours his IT operations-in the past four months, he's visited every IT site in the company. During these site visits, Glotzbach meets with as many as 1,000 IT employees, provides an overview of SBC's IT priorities, discusses the principal challenges in upcoming months, and answers questions.

With such a widely distributed IT staff, SBC also had to do a certain amount of restructuring. The company once had three separate billing centers with their own IT infrastructure and applications; all billing is now handled at a single location. Likewise, IT staff that managed data centers and network operations were relocated to a single site.

The restructuring resulted in more efficient and cost-effective IT operations. According to Glotzbach: "When we combined our companies, we went to one help desk with one system and one set of employees, and we were able to do it with a substantial reduction to expenses."

Specifically, SBC has cut its IT budget to 5% of its overall revenue, down from 6% to 8%. "Trying to blend into one team has been tough," Glotzbach says, "but so far, I'm pleased with how it is going."

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