The newly announced AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service is using Sun's Open Cloud Platform, Sun Cloud APIs and cloud reference architecture as the underlying infrastructure for its cloud offerings. This global cloud-based service is geared at creating an environment to make it easy for developers to build and deploy value-added services, as well as provide companies of all sizes simple on-demand access to scalable computing capacity.

The telecom giant is offering on-demand computing via self-service, and said its service will allow corporate customers to scale up computer requirements quickly.

AT&T leveraged Sun’s Open Cloud Platform, including the Sun Blade Modular System 6000, Sun Storage 7410 Unified Storage System, Sun GlassFish Enterprise Service Bus and OpenSSO Enterprise, along with Sun's design expertise to create a highly flexible and scalable infrastructure for public and private cloud offerings. VMware technologies have been incorporated as well.

According to ZDNet's Larry Dignan, the service comes in three server sizes:

• Small (1 CPU and 4 GB of memory)
• Medium (2 CPUs and 8 GB of memory)
• Large (4 CPUs and 16 GB of memory)

The storage options consist of:

• 100 GB of storage provided with each server image (on the same virtual infrastructure in the same IDC)
• Two supplementary storage options for an additional charge:
• Purchase up to 2 TB additional disk storage per virtual server
• Connect to AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service
• 24×7x365 monitoring of the virtualized infrastructure
• Service level agreement of 99.9% for availability of the infrastructure

Initially, AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service will be deployed in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2009, and accessible by customers connecting to the Web anywhere. In time, AT&T plans to add the service to select global IDCs.

Some of the offered service features include:

• A Web portal to order, provision and manage server capacity, or to program the APIs.
• The convenience to pay only for the capacity used and receive a monthly bill that can, if desired, be paid with a credit card.
• Multiple storage options including disk capacity for each virtual server's operating system and space to share files between virtual servers, as well as the ability to connect to AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service.
• Round-the-clock monitoring of the Synaptic Compute as a Service platform by AT&T support teams.
• A service level agreement that covers availability of the platform that runs the customer's virtual servers.
• No upfront fees, no long-term obligations and no termination fees.

With AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service, customers can program their application to routinely expand capacity during a block of days each month. Companies can program the service to respond to spikes in Web traffic from holiday sales or events, sports programs, short-term campaigns, emergencies and more. Also, IT architects can use the service to build environments for safely testing new applications, or installing system upgrades without impacting the entire enterprise.

"AT&T's network and operational excellence coupled with Sun's Open Cloud Platform and Sun Cloud APIs delivers a revolutionary cloud offering," said Dave Douglas, senior vice president, Cloud Computing, Sun. "We're excited to be working with AT&T to bring an enterprise-class, highly scalable offering that delivers choice and flexibility to market."

More Information

AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service

Sun Cloud Computing

The Benefits of Open Standards and Open Source in Cloud Computing

Sun Open Cloud Platform - Lew Tucker, Sun Cloud CTO, reviews and demos the Sun Cloud at CommunityOne (video runs 8:26) [...read more...]

From the latest issue:

Recent Blog Entries as of March 19, 2010, 1:17 pm
Oracle Works to Assuage the Anxieties of Its Customers SysAdmin News Bites Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Released Suits and Their Countersuits A More Direct Channel Model Planned for Oracle-Sun	The Importance of Information Storage and Management Sun POJO Service Engine User's Guide Sun Storage 7000 2010.Q1 Quality and Features PSA Deploys GlassFish in the Manufacture of Peugeot, Citroën Vehicles Running VirtualBox VMs as Services in Windows
Blog RSS Feed