Telecommunications giant, AT&T, has stated that they plan to offer web-based corporate data storage services, making use of cloud computing technologies created by EMC, a data storage equipment developer. AT&T plans to partner with IBM, Amazon, Symantec, Iron Mountain and others to give companies the ability to transfer data to remote storage facilities. The company will initiate the service from two US-based data centers, but they are seeking to expand overseas.
While the industry is still in its infancy, market researcher Gartner predicts that revenue from cloud-based storage services will leap 22% this year, to some $400 million. The storage services will charge companies for space as it's consumed, with a fixed mutual price per GB each month. This could, in theory, allow companies to reduce storage-related costs by not having to pay for equipment upfront or maintenance thereof.