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AT & T and Microsoft announced a multi-year partnership that will allow AT & T to transition its non-network computing computing needs to the Microsoft Azure Cloud, which becomes a "Cloud First" enterprise. In addition to the 270,000 AT & T employees who will now migrate to the Office 365 platform for office and collaboration needs, as well as the various applications and databases that AT & T needs to manage its various activities going to Microsoft Azure, there's more than just solutions Microsoft is getting a lot of new O365 and Azure customers. And there is a lot more at stake here for AT & T.
From AT & T's point of view, it is clearly important to move to a more modern infrastructure that meets internal needs. But it is equally important, if not more important, to create an environment that allows AT & T to add new services for resale to its customers. 5G will be an innovative technology that will offer network operators many opportunities to offer not only faster connectivity and reduced latency, but also network services they could never have created before. The 5G is revolutionary in its ability to "cut networks" to create a large number of potential services – some at a very high price and others at a very low cost. If network operators do not take advantage of it to offer new services and sources of revenue, others will certainly do so.
All network operators hope to be able to bill not only network connectivity, but also the most advanced services such as specialized security services, remote monitoring and diagnostics, remote health care, smart city services, autonomous vehicles and new entertainment options like AR / VR (also important in business), etc. This requires a distributed computing infrastructure including edge servers and distributed data networks. This must be built on a microservices architecture on the cloud and on distributed computing resources. This is one of the main benefits of the cloud.
AT & T can very well set up a 5G network. But they are not a cloud service provider and can really take advantage of Microsoft in this space. Of course, this means that AT & T will offer Microsoft Azure as a preferred service, which will give it a competitive advantage. But it is unlikely that AT & T will deny customers who insist on competing clouds (for example, AWS and Google). Nevertheless, the "preferred" status gives Microsoft a major advantage to win customers, or at least to generate revenue for services offered by AT & T to its customers.
In addition to the above benefits, Microsoft knows that, as it evolves into a more distributed cloud environment, it needs to create high-speed, low-latency data paths to allow many of the services offered over Azure. Many of these data channels will be wireless, and the 5G is the future of wireless wide area networks, especially in business, where peripherals (vehicles, robots, stand-alone instruments, AR / VR headsets and other IoT capabilities ) may be unattached and / or wandering.
Microsoft devotes a lot of time and resources to creating a distributed / hybrid cloud environment and is focused on creating an IoT infrastructure based on the edge. Who better than a network operator like AT & T, knows where its customers will use the most 5G connectivity, to tell Microsoft where Edge Cloud servers need to be installed (potentially even collocated with AT & T hardware). Is it possible that we can even see edge servers in many cell towers? Yes. And as mentioned before, being a preferred cloud provider means that Microsoft will have a competitive advantage over AWS, Google and other cloud service providers, provided or provided by AT & T.
This partnership provides key benefits to both companies as outlined above. But there are also potential disadvantages. First, if Microsoft is closely aligned with AT & T, what will it mean for potential partnerships with other network operators who might not want to badociate so closely with a company working with AT & T? "l & # 39; enemy"? AWS or Google as a countermeasure. Then, from AT & T's point of view, if they are closely related to Azure, what does it mean, especially for their future corporate customers, who do not wish to be beholden to Microsoft? I do not expect this to be a problem with most consumer services (games, entertainment, autonomous vehicles, for example), because most consumers do not care who is the technology provider underlying.
As a result, we should expect to see many more partnerships between cloud infrastructure providers and network operators as 5G becomes more available in the next 1-2 years. Linking a high-speed, low-latency network to a cloud infrastructure with many new services that appeal to consumers and businesses has great benefits. This will be essential for network operators to become more than just "idiots". However, what was once an "operator provider based on the availability of its signal and its price" can become a "network / cloud combination provider", which makes the choice more difficult in certain situations. Nevertheless, I see this as a win for both AT & T and Microsoft in the long run, and an example of how network operations and services will change in the future.
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