Google and AT&T have now announced a new partnership aimed at bringing Google’s Cloud Platform to business users on AT&T’s NetBond for Cloud. Not only does that allow those customers to access Google’s G Suite, which includes Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive, through AT&T’s Collaborate platform. It also enables the use of Google Cloud Partner Interconnect through AT&T NetBond for Cloud. For those who may not be aware, that will let businesses move their workloads across cloud environments while keeping those loads off of the public net. That’s made possible via private connections created on the Google Cloud Platform at 10Gbps. Presumably, the new solutions are available as of the announcement, which was made on May 29, as that seems to be the indication. However, it’s worth mentioning that there weren’t any details provided with regard to where those would be made available.
Meanwhile, the addition of G Suite to AT&T Collaborate fills out some of the functionality that users may have been asking for. The carrier’s business platform already included access to chat, voice, video, and desktop sharing. G Suite allows for that to be expanded by providing “carrier-grade voice reliability and security” from within G Suite applications themselves. It also enables the use of G Suite applications, such as those mentioned above, across nearly any device and from nearly any location. That flexibility is generally only matched by the number of ways collaboration is possible through Google’s apps on the platform. The suite of software typically includes a Hangouts-based chat tool called Meet and a wide range of administrative tools for managing connections. Those are coupled with a breadth of security features that help businesses keep private collaborations private. In fact, each of those is what makes Google’s cloud-based collaborative products some of the most popular of their type.
The new partnership is also said to be ongoing, as per the companies’ announcement. So there’s a good chance that any new improvements Google makes to its platform will find their way over to AT&T’s platforms, as well. That’s good news for those enterprise customers who had already been using the carrier’s services but were thinking about moving to Google’s Cloud Platform.