November 16th, 2009
AT&T plots compute cloud similar to Amazon Web Services
AT&T on Monday rolled out a cloud computing system that mimics the approach of Amazon Web Services.
Dubbed the AT&T Synaptic Computer Service, the telecom giant is offering on-demand computing via self-service. AT&T said its service will allow corporate customers to scale up computer requirements quickly. As corporate customers increasingly ponder Amazon Web Services, hosting providers and major enterprise IT players are racing to offer similar services. Simply put, many traditional enterprise IT players are likely to emulate Amazon’s on-demand computing cloud model.
The offering, outlined in a statement, is built on software from VMware and Sun Microsystems (Techmeme). Notably, AT&T will use the Sun Open Cloud Platform, Sun Cloud APIs and architecture.
The service will launch in the fourth quarter in the U.S. AT&T will offer international services in the future. AT&T’s feature list includes a portal to order computing power, multiple billing options, storage as a service, no feeds and a service level agreement for the platform.
The service comes in three server sizes:
- Small (1 CPU and 4 GB of memory)
- Medium (2 CPUs and 8 GB of memory)
- Large (4 CPUs and 16 GB of memory)
And the storage options:
- 100 GB of storage provided with each server image (on the same virtual infrastructure in the same IDC)
- Two supplementary storage options for an additional charge:
- Purchase up to 2 TB additional disk storage per virtual server
- Connect to AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service
- 24×7x365 monitoring of the virtualized infrastructure
- Service level agreement of 99.9% for availability of the infrastructure
AT&T has been adding to its cloud computing lineup for the last year. The company didn’t reveal pricing for its compute as a service offering in its statement or Web site.
AT&T’s storage as a service offering costs 10 cents per GB of data transferred. If you have two copies of data in one location it’s 25 cents per GB. Two copies in one location and backup in another will run you 35 cents per GB.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Smart Planet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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