Earlier this week, a pair of cloud news items warranted further reporting, and I’m back with some quick-fire updates on AT&T’s adoption of the OpenStack cloud standard and Google’s biggest customer win yet.
AT&T news in a nutshell: AT&T had announced it was the first U.S. telecom company to join up with the OpenStack cloud community, that it was deploying OpenStack in three data centers effective immediately and that it was planning on doubling that number by year’s end. But I was unsure which, if any, customer-facing services OpenStack was going to power.
The update: A spokesperson for AT&T promises more details are forthcoming, but the company has every intention of offering services based on OpenStack — including AT&T Cloud Architect, which makes sense since it was announced at the same time as the OpenStack membership.
Google Apps news in a nutshell: Google announced its biggest customer win yet, with Spain-based financial institution BBVA planning on moving 110,000 employees to the Google Apps cloud productivity suite by year’s end. Neither Google nor BBVA mentioned any Google Apps partner involvement, and we hadn’t heard back from Google by press time, so we assumed that the channel wasn’t involved in the deal.
The update: A Google spokesperson did some digging for me, and found out that BBVA’s Google Apps migration will be assisted by Spanish service provider Informática el Corte Inglés (IECISA). Just looking over IECISA’s website (thanks, Google Translate), it appears that the company is well-suited to BBVA’s specialized needs, with a cloud portfolio from virtualization to CRM to POS and a claimed range of experience in the sector. I’m sure Google Apps Authorized Resellers will be glad to see the channel represented in this milestone deal.
And there you have it. A couple of quick updates from some of the week’s most impacting cloud news. Stay tuned to TalkinCloud for more.
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