Microsoft scored a deal to provide AT&T with cloud services in support of non-network applications and the carrier’s deepening push into the cloud. The multi-year agreement is reportedly valued at more than $2 billion.
For AT&T, the move is part of becoming a “public cloud first” company, which is marketing speak for a broader initiative on moving non-network workloads to the cloud by 2024. The news comes just a day after IBM announced a hybrid cloud partnership of its own in which AT&T’s business applications will migrate to the IBM Cloud, while internal applications will rest on local infrastructure that uses Red Hat, also owned by IBM.
Microsoft is the second-largest cloud provider after Amazon Web Services, and while the AT&T deal sounds like a big win, it likely won’t increase Azure’s otherwise respectable double-digit market share. It will, however, strengthen that position, as 250,000 AT&T employees are set to begin using the cloud-based Office 365 suite of productivity tools as part of their daily workflow.
As more big companies scramble to modernize their businesses, Microsoft is looking to attract as many as it can to its cloud offering. Earlier this year, the company entered another significant partnership with Walgreens, which has other cloud players worried enough that they’re forging new alliances.
