Mike Sapien, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Telecoms, Ovum

In October 2012 AT&T and IBM announced a new strategic relationship that uses the telco’s secure private network to access the tech company’s back-end infrastructure. The goal is to give Fortune 1000 customers access to IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise+ (SCE+) services with AT&T’s VPN network services. IBM and AT&T plan to launch the new service in early 2013. Either company could take the lead, but it seems likely that IBM will drive these opportunities among its Fortune 1000 customers.

This new relationship should take advantage of the earlier AT&T–IBM partnership, known as “Blue Sky”, and leverage the experience of that relationship. In fact, this latest move should ideally be positioned as an extension of the previous partnership.

With the addition of IBM’s SCE+ services, both players could position the new relationship as a unique …