Otto Group & GitHub E-commerce is about more than just shopping carts. With more shopping shifting not just online but to mobile, retailers need to constantly innovate to stay relevant. Hamburg, Germany-based retail and services company Otto Group offers its customers a variety of innovative technologies to enhance the shopping experience, including augmented reality applications for online furniture shopping or AI driven voice solutions for first level support. The basis for this is provided by a state-of-the-art IT landscape and software development tool chain. These sorts of new digital experiences are a major priority for Otto Group, which owns 30 major company groups and does business in over 30 countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, including Crate and Barrel, Freemans, Manufactum, and, of course, its namesake Otto. Ideally, all of its subsidiaries will share innovations, helping the entire family adapt quickly to the changing world. But many of Otto Group’s subsidiaries have their own IT teams. “It’s a heterogeneous environment,” says Dr. Hanna Huber, Otto Group VP of Technology Strategy and Governance. “Some brands are working with bleeding-edge technologies, others are battling legacy systems.” That led to silos across the company, and instances where one brand might have solved IT problems that other brands were still struggling with.