WT Innovator: AT&T eyes tomorrow's network in public sector

Few companies have the resources that AT&T does. It has annual revenue approaching $170 billion a year but even more impressive is another number -- $135 billion in research-and-development spending over the last five years.

The global telecom giant claims that is more than any other publicly-traded company.

That spending has gone toward products focused on security, mobility, the internet of things and cloud technology.

Along the way it has also developed branded solutions such as AT&T FlexWare, a software-defined network solution; and AT&T NetBond, a high-speed, highly secure cloud access technology.

Its R&D spending is one of the primary reasons AT&T has been picked as at WT Industry Innovator.

Specific to the government market, the company earlier this year formed the almost $15 billion AT&T Global Public Sector business under the leadership of Kay Kapoor, head of the former Government Solutions business.

In the past five years, Kapoor has built a team that has captured major contracts such as FirstNet and a place on the $50 billion GSA Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions vehicle.

In the coming years, those contracts will offer AT&T a prime channel for delivering its innovations.

But AT&T also doesn’t just rely on its own innovation labs. It also forms partnerships and works closely with other leading technology firms. Those partners include IBM, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, Trustonic. Together these companies formed the global IoT Cybersecurity Alliance.

A partnership with Cisco Jasper resulted in the AT&T Control Center, a cloud platform for managing connected devices.

Also notable in the government market is the leadership team Kapoor has built since she took the reins five years ago.

Her team includes Mike Leff, vice president of strategy and operations; Chris Smith, vice president of technology; Jill Singer, vice president of national security; Stacy Schwartz, vice president of federal public safety; Anthony Robbins, vice president of defense; and Rob Dapkiewicz, vice president of civilian.

AT&T is pushing forward with a software-based approach to its innovation. They are reinventing their core network away from being hardware-based. The company expects 55 percent of the network to be virtualized by the end of this year and 75 percent by the 2020.

The company touts it as the network of the future and they work to deliver it to government customers in step with their commercial customers.