https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-at-t-cloud/microsoft-att-ink-cloud-deal-worth-more-than-2-billion-idUSKCN1UC1KK
So, ummm, what's going on here?
AT&T unloads 15,000 IT people onto IBM, presumably to leverage AT&T IT into the IBM Cloud.
And now Microsoft will become AT&T’s “preferred” cloud vendor?
What's the deal?
At IBM I think GTS still does use that. Good luck...
Long summary.
T choose IBM to save costs by offloading employees.
T choose Microsoft Cloud to save costs by offloading desktop licensing and apps.
T choose Oracle Cloud to save costs by offloading Solaris licensing and apps.
Executives at T will have better looking books for a few years and reap gilded bonuses. Meanwhile IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle hold a bag of flaming c-ap and smile like they won an award.
TLDR: Business as usual for T.
AT&T also selected Oracle's cloud https://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2017/05/05/att-taps-oracle-cloud-services-in-historic-agreement/
Everybody wins!
AT&T was already using O365, this is a move into Azure for many of their non-network apps. IBM got legacy T bare metal platforms and the staff that runs it, none of the individuals involved in public cloud or network infrastructure are part of the deal. They can work to "modernize" or "cloudify" that stuff all they want, most of it's running on Solaris or AIX.
Article seems to indicate this is mostly about Office365. Microsoft inflates their "cloud" revenue with BS almost as much as IBM does.
Makes sense to me they will be using Microsoft Azure.
Most likely every client is running on Windows using MS Office.
WTF does IBM have to offer them? A redhat desktop with symphony?