Folks on AT&T board here are discussing an outsourcing deal with IBM that just got signed.
There is a lot of anxiety and questions there.
Maybe someone experienced in this may want to visit their forum and help them answer a question or two - the board is here https://www.thelayoff.com/at-and-t or here &at-and-t and a long thread is here https://www.thelayoff.com/t/104smjJV or here @104smjJV
AT&T has a guaranteed spend contract with IBM.
IBM hasn’t been able to deliver real value under this agreement to AT&T for some time now.
This rebadging of employees to IBM BY AT&T is a way to get value from this Un breakable contract. Ibm is being forced to take on these employees by at&t bc IBM GBS resources s— so bad & AT&T has to spend the money w IBM so they simply shifted their people to IBM payroll . Contact expires in 2021.
That’s the real situation no one will say publicly.
AT&T employees were told they would not be laid off for 12 months. But do they believe it? I would not.
Got internal confirmation,AT&T employees who are rebadge to join IBM effective 1-step-2019 were told for next 12 months there will be no impact to them(means no RA for them).I am expecting next year around step-oct timeframe AT&T employees will be impacted.Also got internal news in One of All hands meeting ,spokesperson someone from Finance leadership that restructuring cost will continue in 2nd half of this year and next year 2020.So I am assuming plan is One RA sometime in August end or sept this year as part of GTS/GBS merger and another one in mar or June timeframe next year and then in Sep-October 2020,AT&T employees will be impacted.
Poor AT&T employees ,they don't know what sh–- they are coming in.
The key is "multiyear deal". Plenty of time for A&T to see their mistake and cancel the deal. They all end up in court and IBM's reputation takes another hit.
IBM Lands AT&T as Client in Cloud Deal –
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-lands-at-t-as-client-in-cloud-deal-11563317480
International Business Machines Corp. said Tuesday that AT&T Inc. is shifting its business service applications to IBM ’s cloud. The terms weren’t disclosed, but IBM said the multiyear deal is worth billions of dollars.
The IBM cloud competes with larger rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. ’s Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. ’s Google.
The partnership builds on IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of open-source software firm Red Hat, which closed last week. Buying Red Hat strengthened IBM’s standing in the hybrid cloud market. Companies use the hybrid cloud to manage software and other systems across different cloud services and their own data centers.
IBM said that Red Hat’s open-source software will give AT&T Business the flexibility to move data and applications among various clouds and data centers. AT&T Business until now has worked with multiple cloud vendors.
Thaddeus Arroyo, chief executive of AT&T Business, said in a statement that the IBM deal lets the company adopt “open, flexible, cloud technologies that will ultimately help accelerate our business leadership.”
IBM will also tap AT&T as its primary source of software-defined networking, building on an existing partnership between the companies. The method uses software instead of hardware to manage applications and users on enterprise networks.
AT&T Business generated $37 billion in revenue in 2018, about 22% of AT&T’s total revenue of $170.8 billion.
Moving its core business applications to the IBM cloud will help AT&T deploy new services to existing enterprise customers faster, IBM said. AT&T Business also will use IBM’s artificial-intelligence applications for a range of services, IBM said.
“It really allows much faster provisioning of new services into the network, and lowers cost as everybody is expanding network capacity,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president of cloud and cognitive software at IBM.
Q2 results are being announced tomorrow, so they'll use this along with the RHT deal as a distraction from what will likely be some pretty dismal numbers.
Any idea what percentage of the announced "billions of dollars" is actual cloud as opposed to the same old IT outsourcing, application maintenance and support, and staff aug dev work?