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AT&T Cloud Ops VP on theCube, Inside AT&T’s Cloud Operations Unit
Steve Caniano, VP of AT&T’s Cloud Operations dropped in on theCube at VMworld 2012 and shared some insight on what’s going on with their operation and where it’s going. As a leader of one of the company’s most strategic business operations, Caniano’s insight on customer and consumer trends across the spectrum offers a glimpse of the foundation of solutions and products of a major cloud and network provider. Largely the vibe of the marketplace is one where the cloud answers many needs and the main story is around agility and customers wanting to move quicker. There is a lot of movement that involves bridging the cloud to legacy infrastructures.
Security requirements are something that AT&T has overcome, in that the virtual private cloud addresses these issues and has much of this built into the network and the cloud level. Customers can also extend their environment through to this secured cloud network, and extend their security. With a heightened level of security and control, and security focus built into the network, the barriers of security start to come down.
AT&T’s services in the hosting space have been in the market for over a decade, they are a leading provider on a global basis. From the scale of their networks, to the range of services, along with 38 global datacenters and services wrapped around that, they offer some of the most advanced services in the world. A proven track record with thousands of customers over many years, they execute at a carrier grade level that is mission-critical, reliable, and enterprise-ready.
The future of the enterprise focuses on the implementation of hybrid clouds, where CIOs have focused their attention. With significant investment in their existing infrastructure, the notion of hybrid clouds is a perfect solution to such goals as geographic expansion, mobility, and capacity. In fact, cloud and mobility marry quite nicely as solutions. Additionally, the time to market equation is a big factor for cloud adoption. Time to market is critical for customer businesses, and cloud services offers newfound ability to turn on a dime, reduce cycles to weeks where they once took months.
The SiliconAngle team has been discussing the Data Infrastructure and seeing validation of this new mission throughout VMworld 2012. Caniano agrees that data is at the center of the value proposition. As data and storage continue to grow astronomically, it is important to note that the focus has to maintain on solutions and storage is just a means to an end. One example Caniano shares is the ability in the healthcare space to create a mobilized access to medical imaging platforms, traditionally a very data-intensive application once bound to localized environments. By taking that raw infrastructure into the cloud and developing this solution, the capacity is converted into a robust solution set.Caniano states that the cloud datacenter is centered on significant customer demands that look at multitenant and private clouds alike. AT&T is investing in a strategy of building multitenant architecture across many sites. This strategy gives the customer flexibility options such as tuning for latency, the ability to move workloads, provide scale, and ultimately a nimbleness that was not possible before.
AT&T has a wide variety of existing client base and serves enterprise of all sizes. The demand for network and cloud services is strong against all the segments, though they have always seen the strongest demand in the mid-market. The solutions deliver answers to the requirements that dog those in this space, like IT staffing, capital expenditure, and resources. Down-market opportunities exist in more finished solutions that can be characterized as turnkey, prefab, or self-serve solutions. The takeaway is that they operate within a wide business focus.
The company is focused on spending time on the union between network and cloud services. Offering the cloud as a feature of the company’s networks means unleashing the potential of turning on computing as a service on demand. Mobile is seen as a key business drive to the cloud, along with the abilities of speed and agility that differentiate businesses in time to market. Additional factors include the advantages of moving away from a capital expenditure model, and putting costs in check, even on the operating expenditure side.
More on AT&T’s Enterprise Cloud Services can be found at http://www.business.att.com/enterprise/Portfolio/cloud/
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