Verizon Business gears up to ride cloud computing boom

Stuart Corner
Monday, 03 May 2010 09:00

IT Industry - Strategy

Verizon business, which started life four years ago as a provider of communications services to multinationals, is refocussing its business around the mantra of "everything in the cloud".

Blair Crump, group president worldwide sales and services for Verizon Business, told journalists at the company's annual Asia Pacific media briefing that the company was making a strategic shift from basic voice and data services to services that can be built onto the network in the IT, security and other realms.

Underpinning this shift is Verizon's Computing as a service (CaaS) offering launched in June 2009 after, Verizon said, more than two years of development. It provides enterprise customers with IT resources such as servers, network and storage 'in the cloud' and accessible on demand via a web portal.

Nicola Morris, Verizon Business' executive director strategy, said: "We believe cloud is no longer a buzz word and while we recognise that cloud adoption varies widely by industry and geography, it is starting to be much more mainstream."

She added that the move to cloud computing was one of several developments having a big impact on the IT market. "We view the market as highly disruptive but that is good: it is a time of opportunity for our customers and for our industry."

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