Verizon announced its Virtual Network Services (VNS) will now work on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, which the company said will give its enterprise and government customers “end-to-end visibility and the control needed to effectively manage mobile-to-cloud transactions.”
“Verizon’s VNS service on AWS complements Verizon’s vision and investment in the software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) ecosystem by helping to enable global enterprise customers to securely connect, deploy and manage virtual networks,” Verizon said.
“With this enhancement, Verizon will help enterprise and government organizations to confidently implement mission critical solutions in the cloud,” Shawn Hakl, Verizon’s VP of networking and innovation, said in a release. “This offering will help our enterprise customers be able to balance agility, performance, cost and security necessitated by the growth of mobile-to-cloud applications and the Internet of Things.”
Verizon’s embrace of Amazon’s cloud comes just a few months after the company sold its own cloud services business to IBM. Verizon’s departure from the cloud business represented a significant pivot for the telecom provider; Verizon had high hopes for being a major cloud and data center player when it purchased Terremark in 2011.
In May, when Verizon announced the sale of its cloud business to IBM, the company’s enterprise chief hinted that Verizon would expand support to additional cloud options. “Our goal is to become one of the world's leading managed services providers enabled by an ecosystem of best-in-class technology solutions from Verizon and a network of other leading providers,” George Fischer, SVP and group president for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said in a blog post at the time.
Verizon isn’t the only telco provider to move away from the cloud space; AT&T, CenturyLink and others are making similar efforts. One of the key challenges AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink have faced in the data center and cloud services market segments is the difficulty of dealing with AWS’ dominance. Unlike the telcos, AWS does not have the legacy drag and can focus on selling next-gen cloud and data center services.
Indeed, Synergy Research revealed in its first quarter cloud services report that there are five major cloud infrastructure service providers that are growing more rapidly than AWS. However, AWS remains well ahead of the pack with an estimated 33% worldwide market share.