AT&T Touts Private Cloud Connections

Private cloud connectivity has not emerged as a high-profile market, but it should come as no surprise that AT&T is the early leader in this nascent area. According to market researcher Frost & Sullivan, the slimmed down behemoth of days past is the "most popular private cloud networking provider" through its use of virtual private networks (VPNs).

Specifically, in the course of surveying 308 U.S. IT decision-makers, Frost & Sullivan found that 48 percent use AT&T to connect their private clouds.

AT&T makes a case for itself by saying how easy it is for customers to link their private networks directly to VMs via AT&T's VPNs, thereby slashing provisioning time and expenses. The company is also bragging about accolades from other sources, i.e. the Info-Tech Research Group, which dubbed AT&T a "champion" for its cloud compute, storage and platform-as-as-service (PaaS) offerings.

Staying on the topic of PaaS, AT&T claims the market research firm Heavy Reading "confirmed AT&T's status as the first telecommunications provider with a Platform as a Service cloud offer."

In addition to providing PaaS for enterprise developers, the company offers numerous managed hosting solutions, including compute and storage offerings, and a virtual private cloud that reportedly enables users to easily shift computing workloads between their private clouds and AT&T's network-based cloud.

Posted by Bruce Hoard on 09/13/2012 at 12:48 PM