AT&T: The CES Cloud Question
2:25 PM -- LAS VEGAS -- 2012 International CES -- AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T)'s plans to get towards a more distributed and global mobile cloud architecture -- with developer programs like Cloud Architect -- is interesting and a savvy early step on Ma Bell's part.
There seems to me, however, to be more heavy-lifting and big spending that needs to go before we see these ambitious plans achieved by AT&T.
"Localized but interoperable" and "global" were key phrases for AT&T CTO John Donovan as he spoke Monday at AT&T's developer summit here. "It's a collection of droplets just like a real cloud," he said.
This sounds great, but doing things like delivering a user's stored video anywhere in the world over a localized connection sounds like a massive undertaking if you actually think about what that would mean in infrastructure terms.
As well as requiring comprehensive fast 3G -- if not Long Term Evolution (LTE) -- coverage. It seems to me that it would likely mean more spending on data centers and core technology like signaling.
Think about the major investment in data centers Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) made for its iCloud service alone.
Maybe this investment is happening behind the scenes. But I'm certainly not hearing about it from AT&T -- or any other major carrier for that matter -- at the moment.
A comprehensive mobile cloud service cannot just be a fluffy matter for any carrier. We need some more concrete numbers on carrier infrastructure investments in the mobile cloud to know how serious the service is.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
There seems to me, however, to be more heavy-lifting and big spending that needs to go before we see these ambitious plans achieved by AT&T.
"Localized but interoperable" and "global" were key phrases for AT&T CTO John Donovan as he spoke Monday at AT&T's developer summit here. "It's a collection of droplets just like a real cloud," he said.
This sounds great, but doing things like delivering a user's stored video anywhere in the world over a localized connection sounds like a massive undertaking if you actually think about what that would mean in infrastructure terms.
As well as requiring comprehensive fast 3G -- if not Long Term Evolution (LTE) -- coverage. It seems to me that it would likely mean more spending on data centers and core technology like signaling.
Think about the major investment in data centers Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) made for its iCloud service alone.
Maybe this investment is happening behind the scenes. But I'm certainly not hearing about it from AT&T -- or any other major carrier for that matter -- at the moment.
A comprehensive mobile cloud service cannot just be a fluffy matter for any carrier. We need some more concrete numbers on carrier infrastructure investments in the mobile cloud to know how serious the service is.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
