T-Systems
Alpine
Peter Lenz
Managing Director
T-Systems Alpine
In 2022, we celebrated a special anniversary in our “Mediabox” children’s media center at the Theodor-Körner-Hof residential complex in Vienna. Originally planned to run for only one year, the Mediabox project offers children and adolescents access to up-to-date computer equipment in their own residential neighborhoods. Since its inception, the project has been repeatedly renewed, due to the strong response it has received, and the obvious need being fulfilled. In 2022, we celebrated Mediabox’s ten years anniversary.
In the Mediabox, we provide modern computers that allow young people to develop a broad spectrum of computer skills. In addition, we provide a learning assistant that helps children and young people with learning deficits. As a result, this project has become a real favorite of ours, and we definitely plan to continue supporting it.
Key facts at a glance
| Markets, business areas and market share | As of 1 January 2020, the businesses of T-Systems Schweiz AG and T-Systems Austria GesmbH were combined under the new T-Systems Alpine brand. This business is headed by Peter Lenz, Regional Managing Director of T-Systems Switzerland and Austria. He has a workforce of 1 200 employees and is responsible for the region with the highest revenue outside Germany. As a subsidiary of T-Systems International, the new “Alpine Region” continues to bundle its competencies, position itself as a top player in the field of digitization and make the international portfolio even more locally available. | |
| Number of customers | 400 companies | |
| Number of employees | 1 200 | |
| Certifications | ISO 9001:2015 | |
| Please refer to the Internet for further information | T-Systems Austria T-Systems Switzerland |
Awards, memberships and collaboration/participation in political dialog (national/international)
In Switzerland, we are a member of the Energy Saving Alliance of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (BFE). The Energy Saving Alliance brings together organizations that voluntarily carry out energy-efficiency and energy-conservation measures, with a view to supporting efforts to assure a secure, sustainable energy supply during winter months.
T-Systems Mediabox
In October 2022, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the T-Systems “Mediabox” project, sited at the Theodor-Körner-Hof residential complex in Vienna. The Mediabox is housed in a branded container, that was located in Leopold Rister Park in Vienna’s fifth district (Bezirk), and was formally opened on 23 October 2012. The Mediabox’s initial equipment suite consisted of 14 laptops, WiFi, a beamer, and a printer. The aim of our effort is to offer the residents of the Theodor-Körner-Hof, a social housing project, barrier-free access to modern computers and the online world.
In 2016, the Mediabox moved to the premises of the “5er Haus” youth center. In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, it received an additional suite of 13 computers, for distance learning. In 2021, we purchased a 3D printer and a plotter, and the Mediabox mentoring staff are now teaching the young people visiting the facility all about how to use this new equipment.
In 2022, the mentoring staff discovered that the children they are assisting had fallen significantly behind in their learning as a result of the pandemic. We have therefore budgeted for funding an additional mentor who is now helping the children to catch up. These efforts are already yielding initial successes.
We also handed out presents at our ten-year-anniversary celebration. The social workers at the facility are introducing the children to the world of programming with two of the presents – the robot “Dash,” and a book about the programming language “Scratch”. At the anniversary celebration, we have arranged for a food truck and an ice-cream van to be on hand to serve all our guests, both young and old. The project was originally planned to run for only one year. Ten years later, it was being renewed yet again, to the delight of all those involved with it.
In December 2022, the center celebrated again the “Nikolofest” – a traditional St. Nicholas festival. The party had to be canceled for two years in succession, due to the pandemic. Nikolo brought the children all kinds of candy and goodies, provided by T-Systems.
Donation for the Wiener Tafel, Vienna’s Food Bank
For many years, we have been supporting the Wiener Tafel – Vienna’s food bank – which distributes salvaged food to needy people in Austria. As part of our employee summer party, we held a raffle, and ticket sales for it generated proceeds of EUR 900. T-Systems Austria’s management then increased that amount to EUR 2 000, and in early October 2022 we donated the money to the Wiener Tafel.
Once again, we purchased food containers from the Wiener Tafel for the 2022 summer party. The containers are food-safe and biodegradable, and we gave them to our party guests so they could take buffet leftovers home with them. This helps prevent high-quality food being wasted, and the purchase price for each box includes a donation for the Wiener Tafel.
E-mobility – Hydropowered
Our organization in Switzerland acquired two new BMW i3 electric cars last summer. One of the two cars now serves as a command vehicle for the company’s datacenter infrastructure (DCI) team in Switzerland, while the other is available as a pool vehicle for business trips.
In early 2021, the entire Zollikofen location made a transition to electricity generated from renewable energy. As a result, the new electric cars are being charged with 100 percent hydropower-based electricity.
Plans called for additional charging stations to be installed by the end of 2022 in order to enable visitors to charge their electric vehicles with green electricity.
“Powercoders” become Colleagues
The “Powercoders – Coding Academy for Refugees” was founded in 2017 in Bern. The Academy offers three-month programming “boot camps” for refugees, with a focus on teaching the basics of programming in Java, Java Script and Python – thereby giving refugees a foundation for a new life. After the camps, participants take part in a multi-month internship program that ideally gives them an opportunity to join a company and gain a foothold in the workplace.
We have been supporting this initiative since 2020, and have enabled two refugees from Afghanistan (Ozra and Desale) to take part in one-year internships in Switzerland. They both demonstrated great commitment and achieved excellent results. In May 2022, the two became a permanent part of the T-Systems family. They landed jobs as DevSecOps engineers, and have since proven to be great assets in terms of their know-how and life experience.
Social Activities in Switzerland
Social Services provided by Apprentices
As part of a project week for apprentices in Switzerland, our young colleagues carried out not-for-profit work for the municipality of Lenk. They split wood, repaired trail paths and cleared fields of rocks, branches and grass. In addition, some apprentices assisted professional caregivers working in nursing homes. The shared week combined not-for-profit work with opportunities to get acquainted, and proved to be a positive experience for all the participants.
McDonald’s Cup Bern Charity Soccer Tournament
In 2021, we gave our Christmas donation to the children’s aid organization Ronald McDonald Kinderhilfe in Austria and Switzerland. At the end of September 2022, a great opportunity came up to do even more for the children’s aid foundation in Switzerland. We were invited to take part in the McDonald’s Cup Bern Charity Soccer Tournament, and we very gladly agreed to join in. Our participation fee of CHF 2 500 went directly to the children’s aid foundation.
Social Activities around Christmas
Christmas Donation
Instead of giving Christmas gifts to customers, in Austria and Switzerland we now regularly opt to donate EUR 1 000 or CHF 1 000 to a not-for-profit organization. In 2022, we made donations to Hektar Nektar. This organization enables companies to sponsor beehives in direct cooperation with a beekeeper, and/or arrange for beehives to be set up on their company premises. Hektar Nektar is working to achieve a ten-percent increase in the honeybee population by 2028. With our donation, we have taken over the sponsorship of 20 000 bees.
Christmas Package Campaign
For the first time, we are offering our employees in Austria and Switzerland the opportunity to take part in a “Christmas package campaign for needy children.” In Austria, we plan to do this through the organization #TeamChristkind, while in Switzerland we will work with the organization Kinderhilfe Petite Suisse. Employees took part by packing small gifts for boys or girls in an age group of their own choosing in festive wrapping. The packages were collected at our various locations and then delivered to the organizations’ own collection points. We were able to hand over a total of 30 packages to the organisations.
Banner Upcycling
We planned to collect our outdated POS materials, including roll-ups, banners and flags, and then hand them over in the new year to a company that employs people with special needs. The company uses these materials to make tote bags, aprons, and other similar items. The resulting products made from 100 percent recycled materials will be presented to our anniversary staff as special gifts. In light of the large quantity of raw materials involved, we are sure that a great many beautiful products will result from this effort!
We consider sustainability criteria in all of our socially oriented projects. The organizations for our support are very carefully selected, and we provide long-term financing.
Because we care about the environment, we plan to launch a new recycling program in 2023. Over the years, roll-ups, banners and T-shirts tend to accumulate, and we plan to turn our older stocks of such materials over to an upcycling firm. This company will use them to make bags and totes that we can then present to long-serving staff in honor of the anniversary. The program will therefore benefit us in two ways: It will enable us to avoid waste, and it will provide us with unique, personalized gifts that we can present to our staff as special thanks.
In 2022, we established many new socially focused and sustainability-oriented priorities – and we plan to keep these efforts in full swing during 2023.