Under a multi-year strategic alliance announced today, AT&T Communications will work with IBM to modernize AT&T Business Solutions’ internal software applications, enabling migrations to the IBM Cloud.
IBM will provide infrastructure to support AT&T Business’s applications. AT&T Business will use the Red Hat open source platform to manage workloads and applications.
As part of the agreement, AT&T Business will be IBM’s primary provider of software defined networking and will leverage the carrier’s latest technologies including 5G, Edge Compute, and IoT as well as multi-cloud capabilities using Red Hat.
IBM will be the primary developer and cloud provider for AT&T Business’s operational applications and will help manage the AT&T Communications IT infrastructure, on and off-premises and across different clouds –private and public.
Additionally, the two companies will work together on edge computing platforms, which will help enterprise clients capitalize on the power of 5G network speeds and the internet-connected devices and sensors at the edge of the network.
“In AT&T Business, we’re constantly evolving to better serve business customers around the globe by securely connecting them to the digital capabilities they need,” said Thaddeus Arroyo, CEO of AT&T Business, in a prepared statement. “This includes optimizing our core operations and modernizing our internal business applications to accelerate innovation. Through our collaboration with IBM, we’re adopting open, flexible, cloud technologies, that will ultimately help accelerate our business leadership.”
AT&T Business has a growing commitment to utilize open source technologies. As part of the relationship, AT&T Business will continue to use the Red Hat open source platform to manage the workloads associated with AT&T Business’s internal applications. On the heels of IBM’s recent Red Hat acquisition, AT&T Business will have greater access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and OpenShift platforms as the foundation for workload portability and interoperability across any vendor’s cloud, on or off premises, the companies said.
“Building on IBM’s 20-year relationship with AT&T, today’s agreement is another major step forward in delivering flexibility to AT&T Business so it can provide IBM and its customers with innovative services at a faster pace than ever before,” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Software, IBM. “We are proud to collaborate with AT&T Business, provide the scale and performance of our global footprint of cloud data centers, and deliver a common environment on which they can build once and deploy in any one of the appropriate footprints to be faster and more agile.”
