Premier 100 Q&A: AT&T's Eslambolchi on software code, SOAs, security

He foresees software security problems of 'biblical proportions'

By Patrick Thibodeau

March 10, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld -

Premier 100 Now!

Premier 100 Weblogs

PHOENIX -- AT&T's top IT leader, Hossein Eslambolchi, this week warned of security problems of "biblical proportions" unless more is done to improve the quality of software code. To help accomplish that, he is working to improve the education of software engineers under a new program at the University of California.
Eslambolchi, who spoke at this week's Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, is president of AT&T's Global Networking Technology Services and serves as the company's chief technology officer and CIO. In an interview with Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau, he also talked about how AT&T is turning to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment to consolidate systems and grid technologies, and touted network improvements at the company that can immediately detect security issues for corporate customers.
AT&T has been retiring many legacy systems. What technologies are you betting on? Let's say you have voice services, ATM services, frame services, IP services -- they all have different ordering systems, so we collapsed them into the "Concept of One," which is now called the Global Integrated Order Management system. It uses a service-oriented architecture, so it's really an object-oriented model. In the old model, if you had 60 services, you write the software 60 times. That's the way it used to be at AT&T. Now we write the software only once, and if I need to get access to address validation I go to my service-oriented architecture, extract intelligence, come back and rout the traffic.
What has an SOA meant for application development and the custom applications? We have 400 systems left. I would say about 80% of what is left is already legacy system, which we are retiring over the next couple of years. We will end up, when all is said and done, by the end of [the] 2006, 2007 time frame, with no more than 50 systems managing the entire global AT&T network, from [what was] originally 800 systems.
Are you standardizing on any particular hardware platform? We are hardware-agnostic. We use HP, Sun, IBM, and for storage, Hitachi and EMC. The differentiation factor comes in on the software layer that we are building right on top of the hardware. We use multiple companies and I don't differentiate them, to be honest with you, unless there is a price differentiation. If you design a service-oriented architecture that could run on any hardware, whether Sun has it, HP has it or IBM has it, whoever gives you the better-cost structure, that's how you use it.
Does grid have a place at AT&T? Grid

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Sustaining SOX Compliance: Best Practices to Mitigate Risk, Automate Compliance, and Reduce Costs
Since the adoption of SOX, much has been learned about IT compliance. Discover how to make SOX efforts more effective in "Sustaining Sox...

Why Compliance Pays
This OnDemand webcast explores the relationship that firms with best compliance records have higher revenue, greater customer retention, lower financial losses from data...

IDC White Paper: CCM for IT Compliance and Risk Management
Learn from industry analysts how IT organizations are using configuration management to meet compliance requirements and instill best practices. Find out how these...

Best Practices for Managing Business Risks from the Use of IT
(Source: Symantec) Based on exhaustive benchmarks conducted by the IT Policy Compliance, this session highlights the relationship between business risks and use of...

Keep it Clean: Maintaining the Integrity of your CMDB through Change Detection
Learn how configuration drift can challenge configuration management database (CMDB) integrity and how a configuration audit tool and an effective change management process...

Managing And Protecting Your Ever Increasing Mobile Assets
(Source: Absolute Software) Your users are becoming more mobile each day. This is great for productivity - yet challenging for IT control. Natalie...

The Tripwire HIPAA Solution: Meeting the Security Standards Set Forth in Section 164
HIPAA requires businesses that handle personal health information (PHI) to set up strong controls to ensure the security and integrity of that information....

Sun OpenSSO Enterprise Webinar
(Source: Sun) This webinar replay discusses Sun OpenSSO Enterprise innovation--the single, open-source solution that helps your business solve the challenges around internal access...

Configuration Assessment: Choosing the Right Solution
Configuration assessment lets businesses proactively secure their IT infrastructure and achieve compliance with important industry standards and regulations. Learn why configuration assessment is...

Agile Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Rapid ROI
(Source: IBM) Content rich business processes are a core feature of daily operations at just about any organization today. Very often these essential...

All White Papers | All Webcasts