Cloud Foundry Summit North America 2019

West Corporation is a global provider of communication and network infrastructure services. West has a diverse portfolio of solutions that include unified communications services, safety services, and interactive services such as automated notifications, telecom services and specialty agent services. For years West was effectively a holding company, operating each of these industry groups independently. With dozens of acquisitions over the last decade, West’s technology portfolio became extremely diverse. In November of 2017 West Corp was acquired by Apollo Global Management and our transformation from a holding company to an operating company began.

West partnered with Pivotal to enable the consolidation and standardization of our portfolio. We identified over 170 applications running in diverse technology stacks for migration into Pivotal Cloud Foundry and later enabled Pivotal Container Service for those that remained. West partnered with Pivotal Services to drive the technology, process, and cultural change necessary to complete the transformation while simultaneously undergoing the organizational, staffing, and cultural changes that result for an ownership change.

One and a half years into this undertaking we have learned many lessons we want to share with others starting their adoption journeys. The consistent theme is that PCF and PKS just work, but that in order to be successful, an organization needs to enable their teams with supporting technologies, streamlined process, and a culture of innovation. With representation from Architecture, Operations, and Development we would like to share with you the things that will either ensure your team’s adoption success or will slow your progress and limit the return on your investment.