AT&T's Team Up With IBM Is Exactly The Jolt "The Cloud" Needs

If you're hesitant to work with your data stored in this ephemeral location called "the cloud", you're not alone – but AT&T and IBM have announced a team-up today that'll send a shock through the market that'll have masses of users converting. When you've got a new technology – or any technology that people may be hesitant to use in general – your best bet in making people adopt it is to prove to them that it's reliable at the same time as it is either fun or helpful to use. To do that you need brand power and better yet, cross-brand power like AT&T and IBM are demonstrating this week.

AT&T has announced that they'll be pushing a global network that users will be able to utilize with cloud-stored data available from anywhere they may roam. IBM is part of this deal with the actual physical data-storage facilities – that data's gotta be somewhere, after all. These two titans will split revenue from the deal, with Andy Geisse, head of AT&T's unit for business clients noting simply that this collaboration will be "huge."

If you've got AT&T, one trusted brand, and IBM, another trusted brand, joining in on one cross-branding project, their mutual trust for one another will blossom and grow in the public eye, providing a bit of synergy, as it were. AT&T is one of several of the largest mobile data providers in the United States, each of them competing now with not just a collection of the best of the best devices, but services that work for these devices unique to the carrier as well.

With IBM on AT&T's side, the other carriers will be forced to move forward with their own "cloud" solution. It's not going to be easy to match up against IBM, one of the world's best-known brands both in and out of the data storage universe.

Are you convinced of the security provided by a crossover project like this? Will you use The Cloud now that a team-up of this caliber has been made available?