Latest deal between AT&T and Intel set to bolster Integrated Cloud platform, has AT&T joining Intel’s ‘Super 7’ club
AT&T announced plans to partner with Intel to work on the telecom giant’s cloud network initiatives.
The partnership calls for work on optimizing network functions virtualization packet processing efficiency for AT&T’s Integrated Cloud platform, defining reference architecture and aligning NFV roadmaps in a move to speed AT&T’s ongoing network transformation. AT&T has said its Integrated Cloud platform is where the carrier runs virtual network functions using OpenStack software at its core, with the carrier having set up 74 AIC physical locations in 2015, with plans for 105 by the end of this year and adding “hundreds more” by 2020.
As part of the deal, AT&T said it will join Intel’s “Super 7” program of web and cloud companies working on network and data center design. That program currently includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. AT&T and Intel previously announced partnerships on “5G” and drone technologies.
AT&T has been one of the telecom industry’s more aggressive telecom operators in moving toward greater software control of its network resources using NFV and software-defined networking technologies. Much of that work is set to rely on commercial off-the-shelf hardware architected to run Intel’s X86 platform and software-enabled using open source-based solutions.
“Open-source software running on hardware powered by Intel chips will enable many of these virtualized network functions,” explained Andre Fuetsch, SVP of AT&T’s Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design, in a blog post. “So we’re asking the developer community to stay engaged, too. Open source groups like OpenStack, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, ON.lab, OpenContrail, the Open Compute Project and others are vital to us.”
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