AT&T announced it is the first US carrier to join the OpenStack initiative, the massively-scalable, open-source cloud operating system founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA in 2010.
The news was delivered as part of a broader cloud strategy presented by AT&T CTO John Donovan at the annual AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas this week. Donovan also detailed the company’s plans to deliver “a better cloud for developers” in a blog entry.
During the Summit, Donovan unveiled a new offering called AT&T Cloud Architect, a “developer-centric cloud platform providing storage and infrastructure as-a-service.” The customizable cloud platform supports near-real time ordering, provisioning and scaling. OS options include Linux flavors, LAMP for CentOS, Debian, Fedora, and Red Hat, as well as Windows Server. Plans are underway for an API framework.
The company claims that Cloud Architect was designed to meet the unique needs of developers, as exemplified by this statement from Donovan: “We understand that developers’ cloud needs differ significantly from those of AT&T Business Solution’s more traditional customers such as CIOs and IT managers. Developers need the reliability and stability of our differentiated cloud too, but first and foremost, they need flexibility, affordability and speed in turning up new services.”
AT&T Cloud Architect is scheduled to launch sometime in the next few weeks and the company says it will continue to expand its support for developers throughout the year.