AT&T (NYSE: T) is pursuing its plans to create a cloud-based network architecture via numerous research projects, including one in which the operator joined IBM and Applied Communication Sciences (ACS) to create a prototype technology that reduces set-up times for cloud-to-cloud connectivity, particularly between data centers, from days to seconds.
The companies said their research might ultimately lead to sub-second provisioning time with IP and advanced optical networking equipment. Further, their approach could elicit "elastic bandwidth between clouds at high connection request rates using intelligent cloud data center orchestrators, instead of requiring static provisioning for peak demand," they said.
The work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. government's DARPA CORONET program, which focuses on rapid reconfiguration of terabit networks. AT&T was responsible for developing the overall networking architecture for this concept, while IBM provided the cloud platform and intelligent cloud data center orchestration technologies. ACS handled network management and optical-layer routing and signaling.
AT&T's vision for the network of the future--the User-Defined Network Cloud--aims to enable bandwidth on demand in the wide-area network (WAN) via software-defined networking (SDN) and intelligent network routing. For more, see this release and this FierceTelecom article.