AT&T Wants To Play In The Cloud Too!

So AT&T is now stepping into the “cloud”. But what does that really mean? Is there offering anything new? Is this a pile of managed services, rebranded with virtualization thrown in for that cutting-edge effect?

In 2006 AT&T acquired USinternetworking and five super Internet data centers. Offering support for large-scale computing and applications on demand with virtualized servers and storage, they are jumping in head-first into the realm of Google, IBM, and all the other players in the cloud market right now. Now, cloud computing is in its infancy, utilization in the market is still quite low and anyone can walk away dominating the market. It all comes down to timing, and distinct offerings. One advantage that AT&T has is that they own the network in their new “Synaptic Hosting” offering. Verizon is expected to kick off 2009 with a cloud initiative.

Their first customer is the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) which will be an ideal test in the cloud computing model. The organization can expect a surge in traffic as the Olympics begin and as stories evolve throughout. An investment in infrastructure, servers, OS, and all else would go largely unused after these Olympics are over. The advantage of course is that the committee will only incur the cost of the capacity actually used throughout this arrangement. A great case for adoption of cloud services. From AT&T’s website:

Expect to see some other big announcements from giants elsewhere as business decisions are made and positioning in the market for dominance becomes a focus. One concern is that large infrastructure companies may rebrand what they are already doing just to compete. I believe as I stated in my last post about Opsource, that leaders in this field will be those with a vision, commitment, and approach to delivering on the promise of cloud computing. This will undoubtedly be muddled by marketing terminology at some point.