Verizon Expands Cloud Solutions, With Secure Cloud Interconnect

NEW YORK, April 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon is addressing the growing need for organizations to connect more than one cloud seamlessly and securely, with the launch of its Secure Cloud Interconnect service (SCI). Enterprise organizations will be able to use Verizon's Private IP service to connect to multiple cloud services including the Verizon cloud and Microsoft Azure, with an additional half-dozen other major cloud services expected to come online later this year.   

In addition, enterprises that have located their private cloud infrastructure in Equinix data centers can directly access Verizon's Private IP service in 15 Equinix data centers in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific: Northern Virginia., Newark, N.J., Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Silicon Valley; London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris; Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. 

"With Secure Cloud Interconnect, Verizon is removing the barriers for enterprise cloud adoption," said Michael Palmer, vice president of product development for Verizon. "The reality is that many organizations today use multiple clouds to meet their business and technical objectives, but there was no easy way to manage this environment until now.

"Our new offering uniquely gives enterprises everything they require in a multi-cloud environment – security, private connectivity, performance, simplicity and efficiency. SCI will enable a wide range of applications and use cases for organizations," stated Palmer.  

Verizon's Secure Cloud Interconnect service will offer a combination of features to enterprises, including dynamic bandwidth allocation with fully redundant connections, application performance throughput and quality of service, usage-based billing, and simple provisioning and management via a centralized portal.  

"As enterprises look to cloud computing for speed, flexibility and efficiency, they also require a platform that offers enterprise-proven performance and reliability," said Yousef Khalidi, distinguished engineer, Microsoft Azure for Microsoft. "With many Fortune 500 companies already using Microsoft Azure, we look forward to extending our cloud services to Verizon's extensive network of clients through its security-enabled enterprise platform."

With SCI, enterprises gain full visibility into which applications are being consumed, by whom, and where and how they are performing.

In addition, for added protection, clients can also add managed security services on top of their solutions.

Experts estimate that the enterprise cloud storage and computing market is growing at 50 percent annually, with enterprise cloud spending expected to increase by 45 percent annually.

SCI Ensures Enterprise-Class Security, Performance

To ensure enterprise-class performance and security, Verizon is deploying Private IP edge routers into third-party clouds to enable pre-integration of networking and data center interfaces. After an enterprise selects its cloud partners, location and service information, Verizon will automatically provision the connection in minutes or hours, versus days or weeks or a month when using the traditional model.

As a result, enterprise organizations can confidently move their applications into third-party data centers and run workloads where it makes the most sense.

SCI with Verizon cloud will be immediately available in three locations (Denver, Northern Virginia and Santa Clara, Calif.), with sites in Europe (London, Amsterdam) available in May. Additional sites are planned for Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by year's end.

The service with Microsoft Azure is expected to be available this summer for customers in the U.S. 

Verizon will offer connections up to 10 gigabits to clouds (Verizon, Equinix, Microsoft) connecting to SCI.

Private IP Provides Secure, High-Performance Environment for Cloud Computing

Available in more than 140 countries and territories, Private IP offers organizations stringent service level agreements, including latency and packet-loss service level agreements. Connections to the Verizon cloud service will also offer end-to-end performance service level agreements.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to consumer, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with nearly 103 million retail connections nationwide. Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers in more than 150 countries. A Dow 30 company with more than $120 billion in 2013 revenues, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of 176,800. For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions Online News Center: News releases, blog posts, media contacts and other information are available in Verizon Enterprise Solutions' online News Center at http://www.verizonenterprise.com/about/news. News from Verizon Enterprise Solutions is also available through an RSS feed at http://www.verizonenterprise.com/rss-options/.

SOURCE Verizon