By Brandon Butler, Senior Editor, Network World |

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Cloud Chronicles is written by Network World Senior Writer Brandon Butler, who tracks the ins and outs of the cloud computing industry.

IBM will manage AT&T’s hosted and cloud services as part of partnership

Cloud consolidation continues

2 male executive standing on fever line reaching out to each other showing partnership or mentoring — Thinkstock

Many pundits have long-predicted continued consolidation in the IaaS cloud computing market throughout 2015 and into next year too.

As evidence of this trend, this week IBM and AT&T announced a broad strategic agreement that will bring these two tech vendors closer together in the cloud computing market.

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IBM will take over management of AT&T’s hosted data center offerings, including its cloud computing and managed services. AT&T services will integrate more closely with IBM offerings too. After the deal is closed, IBM will deliver the managed applications and managed hosting services that AT&T provides today, a press release states.

The partnership represents moves by two important tech vendors. IBM is an expert at managing infrastructure, and helping customers use it. AT&T is an expert in network connectivity. So, bringing these two expertise areas together makes sense.

Read full details of the news here.

Look for continued consolidation in the cloud market into 2016.

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Senior Editor Brandon Butler covers the cloud computing industry for Network World by focusing on the advancements of major players in the industry, tracking end user deployments and keeping tabs on the hottest new startups.

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