Dive Brief:

• AT&T Inc. announced Wednesday it plans to move 80% of its applications into a private cloud by the end of 2016.

• The cloud migration is part of a larger AT&T strategy to leverage technologies such as open hardware and cloud computing to reduce costs, improve customer service and enhance efficiencies.

• AT&T also said it plans to virtualize 75% of its network by 2020. At the end of 2015, AT&T had virtualized only 5.7% of its network.

Dive Insight:

John Donovan, chief strategy officer and president of AT&T’s technology and operations group, told attendees of the Open Networking Summit conference in Santa Clara, CA that AT&T moves one internal IT application into the cloud each day, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The company is moving all types and sizes of applications to the cloud. Last year, for example, AT&T said it ported a 42-year-old inventory management mainframe application to the cloud.

AT&T has already made significant progress with its cloud migration, so the 80% goal is not too exceedingly lofty. At the end of 2015, Donovan said, the company had already moved 60% of its strategic applications into the cloud, and those applications are now running 50% more efficiently than before.

While the popularity of cloud computing among enterprises continues to grow, the cloud can also present challenges. According the 2016 State of the Cloud report from RightScale, a lack of resources and expertise is now the top enterprise cloud challenge.