Following the announcement that BT will merge BT Global, the provider’s multinational corporation (MNC) facing business unit, and BT Enterprise, which sells to UK-based enterprises and public sector bodies, to form a unified BT Business division;

Gary Barton, Research Director for Enterprise Technology and Services at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“BT’s enterprise facing units have been under persistent revenue pressure for a number of years, particularly its MNC-oriented BT Global unit, so from a cost and product development point of view, the decision to merge its B2B operations is sensible. BT has already unified much of its product development process so simplifying its go-to-market operations is a logical next step.

“We have seen multiple service providers reorganize and rein in their ambitions over the last two years and become more focussed on their domestic markets. The cost of investing in next gen services, particularly 5G and ultrafast broadband, has increased due to geopolitical and macroeconomic factors such as COVID, chip shortages, and increased energy costs, and the promised return on investment has not yet been realized.

“Competition from traditional competitors such as systems integrators sits alongside the rapidly growing threat of hyperscalers such as Microsoft and AWS who have already stolen a march in areas such as cloud and unified communications and are now threatening in the wide area network market. As a result, pressure from the service providers’ shareholders will only increase and we can expect further demands for cost cutting.”