AT&T

Tool(s) Used:
AT&T's Vision 2000, CORBA®, Inprise's Visibroker™, IONA's Orbix®

Description:
Throughout the 1980s as telecommunication deregulation was implemented in the US, AT&T moved toward providing a network and competing with other network providers like MCI and Sprint, while the local phone companies focused on providing service to local homes and businesses. Recent laws and decisions have freed AT&T and the various "Baby Bells" to compete for both long distance and local service; this, coupled with the deregulation of phone companies, has led to a new round of consolidation. Pressured by the Internet and drawn by the hope of vast new markets, telephone companies, cable TV companies, and computer companies have been struggling to find the right combination of finance and technology to create a vast new array of services. In spite of all the change in the industry, one of the companies positioned to take advantage of new developments is AT&T.

AT&T holds an internal Distributed Object Day conference to keep its own managers and developers up-to-date on its latest technology initiatives. At the conference, a number of more specialized tutorials were announced for developers wanting more specific training. Among them was the Vision 2000 architecture. In effect, Vision 2000 consists of CORBA and a set of frameworks that AT&T is working to develop both internally and in conjunction with the OMG. In 1997, AT&T had eight pilot CORBA projects, with most systems built with either IONA or Inprise implementations and which were extensively tested for performance and response time. This was critical to AT&T systems. In 1998 and 1999, AT&T developed some 20 to 40 systems that either use CORBA internally or use it to access other systems.

Brain Minnihan, the division manager of the AT&T Operations Technology Center's Architecture, Objects, and Platforms (AOP) Division, noted that AT&T was satisfied that different CORBA implementations could talk with one another. The conference also heard from AT&T representatives who reported that AT&T was happy with its CORBA applications, and they are working with the OMG to develop frameworks that they hope will significantly reduce the time required to develop new applications by providing component frameworks that can be reused.