Verizon Builds Their “Next Generation” Cloud
Those who live in America are quite familiar with Verizon because the telecommunications giant most notably provides mobile services to much of the nation. What many international readers may not know is that Verizon is also one of the largest technology providers to businesses in the USA and that they have been working on cloud technologies for the past 5 years. Many consumers aren’t familiar with Verizon’s enterprise services. The telecom company has made strides in the enterprise cloud market by acquiring several successful startups as it has matured its own infrastructure. Two of the cloud firms that Verizon has purchased are Terremark and Cloudswitch.
Since entering the cloud market half a decade ago, Verizon has focused its efforts on helping enterprises adapt cloud technology. In an interview provided to TechRepublic, Verizon’s Gavin Egan made several candid comments about the future of Verizon’s next generation cloud, “We’ve got a huge amount of experience running cloud and with the challenges that our customers had in terms of using cloud. Why have companies only put a limited set of types of application on the cloud?”
Egan went on to not that 50% of what is hosted in Verizon’s cloud are web based applications, 40% are sandboxed applications that are in development and the remaining computing power is reserved for various other tasks. All of these tasks are almost always executed inside of a private cloud. Verizon’s next generation cloud aims to change that. Egan said it best by stating, “The business case in terms of private cloud is going to shrink. If you look at the market for private cloud today, why do companies do it? Performance is a big thing, security is a big thing. We believe we address a lot of that with our next generation cloud.”
With Verizon’s next generation cloud, the telecom giant aims to offer “Guaranteed” performance. Verizon also aims to sell cloud services in bundles, much like they do their cell phone plans. This plan allows Verizon to participate in SLA agreements with clients. When Egan was asked about accessibility of the new cloud offering, “You will be able to acquire resources on this cloud using a credit card from your home computer. You will be able to contact Verizon to do different types of contract on the cloud. We really opened up in terms of flexibility and the ease of adoption in terms of the cloud platform.” It will be interesting to see how Verizon goes up against enterprise cloud providers such as Oracle, Red Hat and Rackspace as they all tend to compete over the same type of clientele.
