Verizon Terremark Pushes Deeper Into Cloud Territory With New IaaS, Storage Services

The new cloud offerings are currently in beta and will expand Verizon's first-generation Enterprise Cloud service, said Kevin Clarke, director of cloud computing engineering at Verizon.

With the introduction of its cloud offerings, Verizon joins major public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft's Windows Azure. Verizon will offer Infrastructure-as-a Service (IaaS) with Verizon Cloud Compute and Storage-as-a-Service (SaaS) with Verizon Cloud Storage.

[Related: Movers And Shakers: Here's Who Made Gartner's 2013 Cloud IaaS Magic Quadrant ]

Verizon said its enterprise-targeted public cloud is designed to be cost-effective, reliable and controllable. It offers the flexibility, security and transparency that organizations demand, right from the Internet, for small and midsize businesses, IT departments and software developers, Clarke said.

"We decided we want the cloud to be very simple, especially from the customer point of view ... and in terms of operating in a flexible way via the web," Clarke said. "Because of the simplicity, we were able to layer our own software knowledge onto the platform."

This new multi-tier platform will eliminate the "bad neighbor" problems that sometimes occur when too many virtual machines are using too many netowrks, said Clarke. And to combat latency, a "flat-layered network" will enable users to build their own network architecture, giving them more control over the network resources they use on the cloud.

In other words, customers won't have to worry about fitting into predetermined CPU and memory configurations and can build their servers based only on what they need, said Clarke, making it more cost-effective.

Verizon Terremark has also moved away from VMware in order to keep operational costs low, Clarke said. Verizon Cloud uses a different internal architecture that no longer utilizes VMware's ESX and vCloud Director.

"Our provisioning is all done via software, so it is very quick, and we have the ability to create virtual machines in 10 to 15 seconds as opposed to minutes or hours," said Clarke. "We created a user experience that allows online procurement, or they can do the online credit card thing, like Amazon."

Jeremy MacBean, director of business development at IT Weapons, said Verizon's credibility as a telecommunications leader will help to drive its new cloud offerings.

"It is a natural progression for Verizon to get into more IT-related stuff," said MacBean. "The fact that Verizon has a telecommunication history and infrastructure, it might be dangerous to the big guys. It's appealing to people when bundling their data access with cloud offerings, and having that fit into one bill."

As with other IaaS vendors, Verizon will make the new cloud platform accessible to its partners in the near future, according to Clarke.

"We have been working with a number of partners, and the announcement will come in six to eight weeks to run their technologies and infrastructure on top of the cloud platform," said Clarke. "This is the first step of our journey that Verizon is on to create an ecosystem of additional value for our customers."

Verizon will be "cherry-picking" its customers, Clarke said, sticking mainly with enterprises, but will gradually move more into the midmarket and government sectors.

PUBLISHED OCT. 4, 2013