Verizon Cloud Debuts with New IaaS Platform, Object Storage Service

Verizon (News - Alert) has upped the ante on its cloud game with a significant new offering that will succeed its existing Enterprise Cloud. The company announced its Verizon Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform and cloud-based object storage service this week, pitting them against competitors like Amazon and Microsoft (News - Alert) that have played in the space for years.

The company is taking a slightly different approach with the new offering to stand out in the crowd. Verizon claims its new offering provides the agility and economies of scale of a public cloud, while also offering enterprise-level service and performance control.

"This is the revolution in cloud services that enterprises have been calling for,” said John Stratton (News - Alert), president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions. “We took feedback from our enterprise clients across the globe and built a new cloud platform from the bottom up to deliver the attributes they require." 


Image via Shutterstock

The Verizon Cloud offering is made up of the Verizon Cloud Compute IaaS platform and the Verizon Cloud Storage object-based storage service. The platform enables virtual machines to be created and deployed within seconds, with users building and paying for only what they need. Users may also set VM and network performance and can configure storage performance as well as attach storage to multiple VMs.

The Cloud Storage component provides a multi-tenant storage platform that is robust and accessible from anywhere on the Web, making it a good fit for cloud apps.

Verizon’s news comes on the heels of Oracle’s (News - Alert) announcement last week, revealing 10 new cloud services. Those offerings cover the application, platform and infrastructure layers and include an Object Storage Cloud as well as a Compute Cloud, which directly compete with the new Verizon offerings. Those in turn compete with AWS, which have been around since 2006.

Verizon is taking its time going public with the new offerings, and a public beta will launch in the fourth quarter. However, access to both Verizon Cloud Compute and Verizon Cloud Storage will be limited to only a few hundred new users a month at first. The offerings are installed at the company’s cloud data centers in seven locations, although customers will initially be served from the Culpeper, Va. data center. The other centers are slated to be added through the middle of 2014.