Cloud Computing

TRI: Speaking of moving at Internet speed, what's your take on these new internet applications such as cloud computing?

Eslambolchi: Frankly I feel a little bit of deja vu. Yesterday (at the TMF summit) a member was talking about cloud computing and moving a lot of edge servers into the network. But honestly we developed that concept at AT&T back in 2002.

We had a name for this whole concept of cloud computing. We called it autonomic computing -- also known as the Concept of None -- networks that are self-provisionable, self-maintainable, and self-deployable.

The only difference I can see between then and now is that Amazon opened up its API whereas at AT&T we chose not to do that -- for a variety of reasons. One reason was security. Second, we had government-based systems running on our network that put certain restrictions on us.

Nevertheless the strength of processes and BSS/OSS gave us the confidence to open up our network to customers so they could do their own provisioning and maintenance.

In other words, AT&T had cloud computing for our enterprise customers. We just didn't open it up to everyone else.