AT&T's Cloud: Synaptic Hosting

AT&T Inc. (T) today announced the launch of AT&T Synaptic Hosting, a utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses. The platform uses technology acquired from USinternetworking (USi) and will run in five "super IDCs" located in Piscataway, N.J.; San Diego; Annapolis, Md.; Singapore and Amsterdam.
Additional data centers will be added to deliver "enterprise-class" cloud capabilities to companies in the U.S. and abroad.

The service launched with a high-profile customer: the official Web site of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC). Teamusa.org features stories on U.S. Olympians and Paralympians and Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, athlete blogs and social networking tools.

"Fans of the 2008 Olympic Games expect to go online searching for a variety of content about the Olympic Games and athletes," said Damani Short, chief information officer at the USOC. "We anticipate rapidly increasing traffic up to and during the Beijing Olympic Games, tapering off in the months following the events. AT&T Synaptic Hosting is ideal for handling the fluctuating online demand associated with the Olympic Games."

There's been lots of reaction around the blogosphere at sites including GigaOm, Network World and Elastic Vapor.

Some are dismissive of AT&T's entry, but AT&T has a lot of large customers with serious bandwidth needs, and they'll be a player here. There's been discussion lately about whether World of Warcraft is an enormous cloud. Well, guess who hosts World of Warcraft? Yep, it's AT&T's game hosting division.