AT&T’s 2016 Ubuntu selection was for cloud, network and enterprise applications—not a documented decision to replace Microsoft Windows across the company. Canonical announced on 13 January 2016 that AT&T had selected it to provide Ubuntu and engineering support for the company’s cloud and network innovation effort. The announcement describes a specific enterprise-workload choice, and does not establish whether that deployment remains in place today.
What AT&T selected Ubuntu for
Canonical’s 13 January 2016 announcement said it would provide the Ubuntu operating system and engineering support for AT&T’s cloud, network and enterprise applications. It framed the selection around AT&T’s cloud and network innovation effort, rather than a company-wide operating-system change. Read Canonical’s announcement.
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The announcement does not say AT&T replaced Windows on employee computers or throughout the company. It is therefore more accurate to describe this as an enterprise workload selection than as AT&T choosing Ubuntu instead of Windows everywhere.
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Why Ubuntu was selected, according to the announcement
Canonical attributed the decision to Ubuntu’s innovation and performance for scale-out workloads and cloud. AT&T Assistant Vice President of Cloud Technology, Strategy and Planning Toby Ford highlighted open-source and OpenStack innovation, as well as a move toward simpler, more modular scaling:
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“By tapping into the latest technologies and open principles, AT&T’s network of the future will deliver what our customers want, when they want it.”
“We’re reinventing how we scale by becoming simpler and modular, similar to how applications have evolved in cloud data centers.”
Both quotations are reproduced from Canonical’s announcement. The source does not provide a head-to-head Ubuntu-versus-Windows evaluation, nor does it say cost or security drove the selection.
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What the announcement does—and does not—establish
- Established: Canonical announced the selection on 13 January 2016 and described Ubuntu plus engineering support for cloud, network and enterprise applications.
- Not established: that AT&T replaced Windows across its workforce or company, or that the announced deployment remains active today.
- Historical context only: Canonical’s announcement said more than 80% of large-scale OpenStack deployments at the time were on Ubuntu. It did not name an underlying study or separately date the statistic, so it should not be treated as a current, independently verified market share figure.
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