1.4  Main focus areas for products and innovations

The disclosures made in the subsection “1.4 Main focus areas for products and innovations” are “non-audited management report disclosures”, as the content of “non-management report-related disclosures” is not audited.

As an internet service provider, the United Internet Group does not engage in research and development (R&D) on a scale comparable with manufacturing companies. Also within the context of its own sector, research and development expenditures play a fairly subordinate role. Against this backdrop, United Internet does not disclose key figures for R&D.

At the same time, the United Internet brands stand for high-performance internet access, solutions, and innovative web-based products and applications which are mostly developed in-house. The success of United Internet is rooted in an ability to develop, combine, or adapt innovative products and services, and launch them on major markets.

Thanks to its high-performance development centers (especially in Karlsruhe, Berlin, and Bucharest) with around 3,800 programmers, product managers, and technical administrators (corresponding to around 35% of all employees), United Internet is able to react swiftly and flexibly to new ideas and trends, and to continuously enhance its established products by adapting them to changing market needs – a key success factor in the fast-moving internet market. The Company’s expertise in product development, enhancement, and rollout minimizes its reliance on third party development work and supplies in many areas, and thus ensures decisive competitive and time-to-market advantages.

Due to the steady growth in customer figures, the demands placed on reliability and availability are constantly rising. In addition to the further development of existing products and continuous optimization of back-end operations, the Company also focuses on continuously enhancing existing processes in order to raise system reliability, and thus also customer satisfaction.

Focus areas 2023

Consumer Access

  • With the launch of mobile services in 1&1’s mobile network in December 2023, 1&1 established the key prerequisites for extending its vertical integration in this market segment – as in the landline segment; 1&1 has since been producing advance services for new customers in its own network; wherever 1&1 does not yet have sufficient network coverage during the network rollout, it uses the national roaming advance services of Telefónica and, from summer 2024, of Vodafone; as of the beginning of 2024, existing 1&1 customers on third-party networks are being gradually migrated to the 1&1 mobile network.
  • Extension of “1&1 5G at home” with addition of conventional telephony, making it a complete replacement for DSL, cable or fiber-optic home connections
  • Simplification of process for multiple orders of mobile products from business customers
  • Implementation and start-up of a new omnichannel platform (Customer Operations)
  • Process enhancements and implementations in connection with the German Telecommunications Modernization Act (TKMoG)
  • Extensive enhancements and improvements to fiber-optic customer communication and optimization of customer processes
  • Implementation and launch of 1&1 Cinema as a video-on-demand service; usage via TV app or together with IPTV
  • Expansion of products, ordering options and services for business customers
  • Standardization of order communication: platform for text-based order communication was revamped and standardized; to improve comprehensibility, customers now receive all order documents in a standardized form and based on the shopping cart display
  • Creation of a new platform for landline products at Drillisch Online

Business Access

  • Launch of Cloud PBX product “1&1 Business Phone” in cooperation with NFON
  • Introduction of “1&1 Fiber Connect Basic” product for smart clusters in business parks
  • “1&1 Connected Calls for MS Teams” as a simple telephone system and access to the public telephone network with Microsoft Teams  
  • Expansion of the “1&1 Business Phone” product to include hospitality as a cloud PBX industry solution for the hospitality and trade sectors
  • Launch of an internet product for customer locations abroad
  • Implementation of a multichannel order management system for fully digitalized order entry across all sales segments
  • Extensive expansion and optimization of customer processes
  • Integration of further advance service products to increase the fiber-optic footprint in Germany

Consumer Applications

  • Launch of “United Internet Media Ad Manager” to improve internal and external control and creation of online campaigns
  • Implementation of a modern Customer Care Suite for the GMX and WEB.DE brands that raises degree of automation in processing and can be flexibly adapted
  • Expansion of upselling order lines in mobile applications to effectively support sales campaigns
  • Launch of a new e-mail web client (read use case) for GMX and WEB.DE
  • Extension of the AI-based categorized mail inbox (One Inbox)
  • Launch of “Account Recovery Assistant” that provides customers with highly automated support in the event of access problems
  • Implementation of “ Effective Settings”, a centralized high-load platform for applying business rules to products and advertising across the company, based on consent, contract data, and legal frameworks
  • Conversion of the cashback platform from WebCents to EUR cents and addition of a credit card that users can also use offline to collect cents
  • Optimization of advertising by using AI to calculate prospecting scores
  • Launch of a lead generation system to enable customers to sign up for new newsletters from their inbox

Business Applications

  • Extension of “Database-as-a-Service” with MongoDB as document-based NoSQL database
  • Replacement of HDD storage with SSD products for higher storage performance, efficiency and packing density
  • Extension of Virtual Network Services with Managed NAT Gateway, Managed Network Load Balancer, Managed Application Load Balancer and Cloud DNS
  • Launch of IPv6 in native network stack
  • Launch of open source solution “Managed Stackable” (by IONOS and Stackable) as first Managed Big Data product
  • Launch of STRATO Virtual Dedicated Server based on IONOS Cloud Compute
  • Launch of STRATO V-Server based on IONOS Cloud (CoreVPS/Cubes)
  • Launch of HiDrive4You as new STRATO cloud storage tariff
  • Introduction of AI solutions in website builder and domain search
  • Launch of virtual CPUs as new compute type
  • Introduction of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as first commercial Linux operating system
  • Launch of new platform services: Private Node Pools for Managed Kubernetes, Container Registry Vulnerability Scanning, and Logging-as-a-Service
  • Launch of a new managed server generation based on Alma Linux at STRATO
  • Introduction of ServerGuard24 for STRATO server products