AT&T goes the next step on managed IT

AT&T is upping the ante in the managed IT services space, offering to take on existing IT infrastructure and equipment, whether it is located in a customer-owned data center, a remote office or even at a third-party collocation space. AT&T’s Remote Infrastructure Management service will include managing and service IT equipment, software and applications as a managed service with a set monthly fee.

This is a major move by AT&T, according to Gartner analyst Eric Goodness.“What’s really different here is one, AT&T is going to the market and messaging against the entire OSI stack,” Goodness said. “They are going to the market with a remote management play that makes them a seven-layer player. The next thing that is really interesting is that AT&T is offering remote management as a stand-alone offering. Most companies will only do it if customer has a certain network service that is its branded network.”

By doing this globally, AT&T is taking on offshore providers, many of which are based in India, China and the Phillipines and most of which don’t have North American assets, Goodness said. “I think it’s a very big move – they are really solidifying their position as a global provider,” he said. “I assume they see it as a pull-through lever to sell more network equipment , and when network maintenance contracts are up, they will get those multi-vendor contracts.”

AT&T expects the service to resonate, especially in hard times, with companies that want to outsource their data centers to focus on their core competency, said AT&T Assistant Vice President Chris Costello.

“The customer demand for this type of a service has continued to increase over time – we recognized many customers have those investments and couldn’t get out of them,” Costello said. “Many businesses are wanting so much to focus on their core business, they may have headcount freezes so they can’t hire additional staff and they don’t want to spend several million for new hardware that is about end-of-life. With this service, they will have a much more predictable monthly fee.”

Most managed IT services start with the service provider buying and installing the equipment. Taking on existing IT infrastructure poses an additional challenge, but Costello said AT&T already has the expertise to handle that challenge based on its many years of managing its own global data centers. “We had most of this talent on board – this is a natural extension of the managed data services business we have been offering for more than a decade,” Costello said.

The prime targets for this offering are the customers who are nearing the end of  their data center equipment’s life cycle, he added.

“We are trying to target customers who are ready for a technology refresh or are looking to bring up a new application and will be looking for AT&T to purchase the equipment, build it into a managed service and operate that at scale; that is our target market for this,” Costello said. “But we know there are customers who haven’t fully depreciated their equipment or aren’t at the end of its life cycle. So generally, the infrastructure elements we will manage for them are servers –dedicated or virtual – operating systems, middleware and databases and, depending on what level of service the customer is looking for, applications and networking infrastructure such as load-balancing or application acceleration devices. We will also manage both primary storage, such as storage area networks devices, or backup storage, including short-term and long-term vaults.”