Microsoft Announces Major Cloud Partnership With AT&T

Microsoft is announcing a major, multiyear partnership with AT&T today. Microsoft will be playing a huge role in AT&T’s public-cloud first transformation, which will involve the company offer services that run on Microsoft’s cloud.

The huge deal between both the companies will see AT&T moving its non-network infrastructure applications to Microsoft Azure. The deal will also see AT&T moving its workforce to Microsoft 365, which is a huge win for Microsoft.

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Ultimately, both the company hope the new partnership will allow them to integrate their emerging technologies together. Microsoft is more specifically focusing on AT&T’s 5G network and its own edge-computing technology. “Microsoft will tap into the innovation AT&T is offering on its 5G network, including to design, test, and build edge-computing capabilities. With edge computing and a lower-latency 5G connection enabled through AT&T’s geographically dispersed network infrastructure, devices can process data closer to where decisions are made,” the company said in a blog post.

The deal is reportedly costing AT&T a whopping $2 billion, according to TechCrunch. Both the companies didn’t disclose any of the financial details for the partnership, though. “The world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and we are delighted that AT&T chose Microsoft to accelerate its innovation. Together, we will apply the power of Azure and Microsoft 365 to transform the way AT&T’s workforce collaborates and to shape the future of media and communications for people everywhere.” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

AT&T moving its workforce and some of its services to Microsoft’s services is undoubtedly a massive win for Redmond. Microsoft’s cloud business has already been excelling, and its Office/Microsoft 365 business isn’t doing any worse, either. So this new $2 billion deal is another huge boost.

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Conversation 6 comments

  • skane2600

    17 July, 2019 - 1:38 pm

    <p>What AT&amp;T 5G network?</p>

    • MikeGalos

      17 July, 2019 - 9:05 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#443332">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>The one that's about to be deployed but already exists in test sites and that already has interfaces to develop for. Why? Was there some other you're worried about?</p><p><br></p>

      • skane2600

        17 July, 2019 - 10:35 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#443431">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>Are you talking about AT&amp;T's well-known fake 5G or a real one that isn't ready yet?</p>

  • ebnador

    Premium Member
    17 July, 2019 - 2:56 pm

    <p>I don't understand according to this article from yesterday <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/at-t-expands-partnership-with-ibm-with-multi-year-deal/&quot; target="_blank">https://www.zdnet.com/article/at-t-expands-partnership-with-ibm-with-multi-year-deal/</a&gt; <span style="color: rgb(8, 14, 20);">AT&amp;T will bring its Business's applications to the IBM Cloud.</span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(8, 14, 20);">So does that mean AT&amp;T will have its internal users all running Microsoft 365 on Azure, while selling all its business applications and services on IBM's cloud. No dog food for AT&amp;T.</span></p>

    • bassoprofundo

      Premium Member
      17 July, 2019 - 3:54 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#443354">In reply to ebnador:</a></em></blockquote><p>All non-network functions are being pushed to public cloud (i.e. – Azure) first now, which is a complete reversal from the previous policy. You have to have special exception to have resources provisioned on the internal cloud infrastructure for non-network apps. AT&amp;T is also going full Microsoft 365 and will eventually migrate on-prem services (ex.- Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.) to cloud based.</p><p><br></p><p>For the IBM agreement, IBM takes over a huge amount of AT&amp;T datacenter resources and most of the delivery responsibility for internal AT&amp;T applications that support AT&amp;T Business. Along with that, there is a huge outsourcing happening internally that will move those delivery teams over to IBM as employees (only guaranteed 12 month "offers" after which, one would assume, they'll be replaced with cheaper resources).</p>

  • Scott Kelly

    Premium Member
    17 July, 2019 - 3:35 pm

    <p>I wonder if this means that the iPad's the sales people use will be replaced with Surface devices?</p>

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