Verizon unveiled a new cloud computing offering yesterday, the latest in its series of “Computing as a Service” (CaaS) packages, aimed at small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

The real target of the announcement is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has pioneered the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) frontier that has redefined the way computing power is packaged and delivered to the marketplace.

Although AWS hasn’t threatened to enter the telecom business, like Google, its success in the cloud computing market has raised the bar for telcos who have been laboring in the hosting business for many years.

AWS’s claim to fame in the cloud computing arena has been the hyper-elasticity and minuscule price-points of its IaaS solutions, which are bolstered by a myriad of third-party tools vendors. These services have primarily appealed to tech-savvy users, large and small, willing to cobble together these on-demand, online resources to meet their situational computing needs.

Verizon is … Read More »

Yesterday, Verizon Business introduced an on-demand, “cloud-based” Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution that will be an important indicator of whether telcos can succeed in the cloud.

Anyone who has followed my writings knows that my roots are in the telecom industry, having helped to launch IDC’s Communications Industry Research program in 1983 at the time of the AT&T divestiture.

I’ve watched the telecommunications giants make many failed efforts to penetrate the data center. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they tried their hand at systems integration and IT outsourcing.  In the late 1990s, they aggressively provisioned fiber optic cables and built out showcase network operations centers (NOCs) to exploit the Internet explosion and capitalize on the over-hyped demand for managed services which never fully materialized.

After the telecom industry shakeout at the beginning of this decade, the telcos bought their way into the Application Service Provider (ASP) market. Verizon acquired Digex and Totality via MCI, and AT&T … Read More »