Amazon Rivals CSC and AT&T Team Up to Take on Cloud Space

22 Aug 2013

Computer Sciences Corp, the systems integration giant, has announced an agreement with AT&T through which the latter will host CSC's BizCloud private cloud offering from now until at least 2020.

CSC states that the deal will enable the company to expand the reach of its BizCloud service, as well as allow it to present stronger competition against dominant cloud players like Amazon Web Services.

The executive vice president and general manager of Global Infrastructure Services at CSC, Gary M. Budzinski, said: "This is all a really tremendous growth play [to address] the challenges that our enterprise clients are having. They really want to move quickly into this next wave of technology transformation to cloud-based architectures with applications that allow them to differentiate themselves. We believe this is extremely disruptive in the marketplace."

No financial details have been made available. Both AT&T and CSC confirmed that the latter would distribute the BizCloud service, which is described by CSC as an enterprise-grade private cloud, or "Amazon on steroids." This would be pushed through AT&T's global cloud infrastructure platform and network past 2020, and will also come with the option to extend that time frame.

Budzinski said: "This is a seven-year, long-term contract. Other than, perhaps, a client having an exception to using [AT&T], we will lean in, almost 100 percent, to them."

CSC will advantage from leveraging AT&T's global network to scale out the BizCloud service, so that it will be able to handle any growth in the future. CSC's cloud services are expected to be worth around $1 billion, and Budzinski added that almost 30 percent of deals closed by CSC involve the cloud, which is an increase to five percent from three percent last year.

CSC's BizCloud business has jumped 200 percent year-over-year, and is 60 percent of the company's overall cloud business.

As new users join CSC, there is a growing need to scale BizCloud; this comes from the need to address a larger amount of cloud-based applications."

Budzinski said: "Customers want to scale quickly. This is why this [AT&T] partnership makes so much sense and positions CSC to work in such a great way with our customers."

The new deal also outlines that AT&T will manage CSC's internal network and managed network services portfolio. All relationships with CSC and BizCloud customers will be addressed by CSC. Furthermore, "application expertise" will be offered to AT&T directly and AT&T customers, and this is the ability to "modernize applications," or help clients keep their applications secure, high-performing and ready for next-generation technologies like the cloud, virtualization and mobility.

Budzinski noted: "This application migration is on every executive's mind. Every CIO and business unit is trying to figure out how to create the flexibility of a pay-as-you-use, quick-to-market [model]."

AT&T will benefit from the full line of professional services offered by CSC, and these include those specific to applications.

The vice president of hosting at Cloud Solutions at AT&T Business Solutions, Steve Caniano, stated: "I think that there will be enhancements that we can make to our direct customer offers through CSC's capabilities, like integration, professional services, and those kinds of things, which we don't generally provide ourselves. It gives us the opportunity to partner with somebody who is a leader in that space and incorporate some of those capabilities into our customer solutions." (CY) Link

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