Everywhere you turn these days, cloud computing is the talk of the tech world. Apple’s domestic iPhone partner, AT&T, is preparing to take on competitors like Amazon Web Services as they roll out Synaptic Compute As A Service.

According to Data Center Knowledge, Compute As A Service offers processing power that can be used for “cloudbursting” of in-house apps or as a testing and development platform. It joins AT&T’s existing Synaptic hosting (a managed hosting service using cloud technologies) and Synaptic Storage As A Service. AT&T is hoping that its popular brand name will win the hearts of enterprises looking to the cloud.

“This will enable customers to create a provider-based private cloud accessed either via the public Internet or private connections, which many companies will already have with AT&T,” explains Steve Caniano, Vice President of Hosting and Cloud Services for AT&T.

“The model that folks like Amazon have introduced is of interest to a lot of customers. We’re offering the same kind of value proposition to enterprises, but without the issues that scare them a little bit,” Caniano explains, referring to end users’ control over their data, performance and security.

Synaptic Compute As A Service leverages Sun Microsystems hardware and VMware software and will launch in the fourth quarter of 2009. Compute services can be billed on a credit card or as a line item on an enterprise bill, offering yet another level of convenience. The service will be in U.S. data centers only for now, but AT&T plans to satisfy international customer demand by adding the service to some of its global data centers in the near future.