Telecommunications giant has AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) has signed a deal with International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) aimed at enhancing its back-end systems such as enterprise, ordering and sales data. These are part of the efforts by the Dallas, Texas-based telecom firm to change the way enterprise applications are built by adopting a microservices model.
Using the microservices model will entail the creation of functions as building blocks which play off against each other. Consequently it will be easier for particular functions, for instance mobile payments, to be redeveloped or tweaked without the entire app being overhauled. When making the announcement AT&T declared that the old method of developing enterprise apps was dead and buried.
Faster and scalable
“We’re now looking at the 2,200+ apps in our IT system. And we’re starting to break them up into microservices to create agility, speed and scalability that wasn’t possible before,” said AT&T’s Technology and Operations president, Melissa Arnoldi, in a statement.
Though details such as the value or length of the deal were not revealed, it is believed to be a multi-year contract. It is expected that the agreement will bring down the development costs that AT&T has to shoulder since the microservices model allows it to be more efficient.
Business strategy
The deal with IBM comes at a time when AT&T is shifting its business strategy with a view to positioning itself as an entity which offers more than data and voice services to corporate clients. This year the business solutions segment of AT&T was rebranded to AT&T Business and a chief executive officer appointed to lead it.
Besides IBM, AT&T has also struck a partnership with leading cloud services provider Amazon Web Services with a view to offering corporate clients a connection to the cloud that is more secure. This is through private connections which bypass the public internet. Though connections made via the public internet are the most common for businesses to link to the cloud, this method poses security risks besides raising network latency due to its unpredictable nature.
On Mondays hares of AT&T Inc fell by 1.27% to close the day at $33.54.