Verizon Labs Taps EMC For Software-Defined Storage

Today's data center infrastructure supports more applications, more users and more workloads, putting storage at the very core of intelligent data management. As traditional storage models move from physical storage to virtual – or software-defined -- storage, applications are accessing data or virtual disks as opposed to physical disks. Compared to rigid hardware, software-defined storage's inherent flexibility improves the use of storage resources as well as enables quicker upgrades and changes. As part of its software-defined storage strategy for its product strategy and development platforms, Verizon Labs is expanding its relationship with EMC to bring together the technology and expertise that helps Verizon customers make the business transition to cloud services. Verizon Labs currently uses EMC to provide scalable virtualized block and object-based storage services. "With cloud-based data storage like EMC's, Verizon gains adaptability and intelligent data management, which are integral to our cloud strategy," said Kumar Vishwanathan, vice president and chief technologist for product strategy and development, Verizon Labs. "Software-defined storage overcomes the restrictions of hard-wired architecture and delivers the benefits needed in today's dynamic datacenter environment." EMC enables commercial software to work with open source software to improve scalability, performance and reliability. Virtualized storage plays an important role in Verizon's go-to-market strategy by speeding up delivery of applications and services to its customers. Verizon Labs is running EMC's software-defined storage on commodity hardware while taking advantage of containerized, scalable, geo-distributed object storage and maximum elastic performance. "EMC and Verizon are working to push the boundaries of speed, capacity and capabilities of storage infrastructure to meet the demands of next-generation applications. With this state-of-the-art software-defined datacenter technology, built on EMC's ScaleIO and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) offerings, we expect Verizon Labs to increase datacenter efficiencies in addition to gaining massive scale," said Sam Grocott, senior vice president of product management and marketing, emerging technologies for EMC. "EMC partnered closely with Verizon to deploy this simpler architecture to help support their cloud service strategy." EMC is integrating its commercial storage software with the open source Apache Mesos technology, as well as with the Mesosphere Datacenter Operating System (DCOS), for easier and more effective data center management. This approach allows Verizon Labs to operate a virtualized data center by managing distributed applications on large clusters of geographically distributed computers. "When it comes to virtualization, the more advanced the organization the greater the benefit, and we look forward to bringing those benefits to our customers," said Vishwanathan. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) employs a diverse workforce of 177,900 and generated more than $127 billion in 2014 revenues. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with 110.8 million retail connections nationwide. Headquartered in New York, Verizon also provides communications and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers worldwide. For more information, visit www.verizon.com/news/. VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts and other information are available at Verizon's online News Center at www.verizon.com/news/. News releases are also available through an RSS feed. To subscribe, visit www.verizon.com/about/rss-feeds/. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/verizon-labs-taps-emc-for-software-defined-storage-300187527.html SOURCE Verizon