AT&T joining cloud-computing field

Update, 8:32 a.m. PDT Tuesday: Makes note of actual AT&T announcement.

AT&T is joining the burgeoning field of cloud-computing service providers that offer networking and storage services, according to a report late Monday on The Wall Street Journal site.

Cloud computing, which has attracted such heavyweight players as Google, IBM, and Amazon.com, relieves companies of the burden of managing their own data centers. One of AT&T's first customers will be the U.S. Olympic Committee, which runs Teamusa.org and other Olympics Web sites, according to the newspaper. AT&T's services will help manage event videos and results as on the organization's sites as traffic spikes during the Beijing Olympic Games.

Another sector AT&T expects to benefit from with this service is e-commerce. Jim Paterson, a vice president of product development at AT&T, told the Journal online retailers could use the service to help manage spikes in shopping activity, such as the day after Thanksgiving.

However, while cloud computing is very attractive to large businesses, it also carries risks. Last month, Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) experienced an extended outage that cut off many companies from their data. Amazon offered an automatic credit to companies affected by the outage, but the outage highlighted the vulnerability posed by relying on a data center that companies don't have physical control of.

On Tuesday morning, AT&T officially announced the service, called AT&T Synaptic Hosting. The company said that it would have five regional gateways, or "super Internet data centers," for the utility computing service, located in Piscataway, N.J.; San Diego; Annapolis, Md.; Singapore; and Amsterdam.

[benjaminstraight]

A form of outsourcing that allows the company using Cloud Computing to move focus on company issues instead of administrative tasks.

[MaggieRed]

Wonder if all these companies are aware that Dell is attempting to trademark Cloud Computing?

[jacomo]

What will make Cloud Computing successful is reliable Links to data Centers. Without a reliable always on network these services will always be suspect.
The Internet best effort approach is limited in many ways.
If one looks at what Google is doing nationwide today, and world wide near term, with their placement of Major Data Centers link by Fiber one can see the emergence of what Cloud Computing can and will be. The only piece they (Google) is missing now is a Fiber Link to Service Providers in local areas. If a Service Provider can gain direct fiber feeds into these data centers they in effect would have access to not only Googles list of Content and Applications they would have access to the Internet (via a Super Tier#1 provider approach) for any information not captured and or stored on Googles Data Servers. But key to Cloud Computing is the SP direct feed (Fiber) into a tightly controlled and managed applications.

[jacomo]

2 Comments:
1. Without a direct Fiber link (or 100Mbps Plus Metro Ethernet) into local Data Centers you will not be successful. If one uses the best effort Internet and existing Tier#1 providers you will be susceptible to interuptions. Watch what Google is planning and will do here in the next few years-They will effectively replace the Internet with a dedicated Fiber link to its local Service Providers providing high quality, low latency symmetrical services access to their Content and Applications.

2. Come on AT&T: ".. AT&T Synaptic Hosting"
Who is your target market here anyway??

[bruceslog]

Umm, is this the same AT&T that got caught routing all of our phone calls and emails into a room for the FBI to scan and read in direct violation of our U.S. Constitution ?

And someone wants to let this company have even more data ?

This world is getting weirder and weirder.