AT&T Dives Head First into the Cloud

AT&T is perhaps one of the oldest and most respected international telecommunications companies in the world. Although AT&T has a multi-billion dollar empire, the telecom provider has had an epiphany of late:  Either adapt with the cloud or be left behind.

AT&T is rapidly incorporating cloud into their plethora of offerings through a series of in-house innovations, acquisitions and enhanced infrastructure. AT&T is betting big on businesses ditching the traditional computing methodology. AT&T believes that mobile computing is the next big trend in corporate business and AT&T wants to be the company that the big corporations turn to when they need mobile computing and telecommunications solutions. Being that AT&T has a vast global high speed telecommunications network, AT&T becomes a natural fit for businesses who need enterprise level mobile technology and infrastructure.

“All of the corporate connectivity is going from desktop computers to smartphones and tablets,” says Ralph de la Vega of AT&T’s mobile and business solutions department. “We’re looking at an environment where the business mode of operation is changing to ‘mobile first.’”

Industry experts note that AT&T is going directly head to head with some of the most innovative startups in cloud. Take Twilio for example; Twilio is a telecommunications vendor for some of biggest players in technology. In fact, companies such as Box and Uber have used Twilio in some way, shape or form. AT&T has lagged behind fresh start ups such as Twilio and AT&T looks to refocus its business telecommunications packages towards the models that Twilio and other vendors provide.

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The next big step for AT&T is to offer direct access to IaaS to corporations using AT&T’s private routes. AT&T has established contracts with Microsoft, Equinix and most recently Amazon in order to allow direct connections into the cloud using AT&T fiber. AT&T’s de la Luca goes on to say, “Phone switches are in our past. We’re moving to network functions in commodity computer servers. We’re bringing in new players.”