UPDATED: Verizon adds CloudSwitch to its ever-growing cloud portfolio

Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) is serious about the cloud service market and is now acquiring Burlington, Mass.-based cloud software provider CloudSwitch.

Verizon said that the acquisition of CloudSwitch would enable it to help its business customers move into the cloud by combining its software with the Terremark IT subsidiary that it acquired earlier this year.

So what does CloudSwitch bring to the table?

CloudSwitch's software helps enterprises that are transitioning services into the cloud more efficiently between a company's data center and the cloud without having to change the application at the application or infrastructure layer.

Verizon will now be able to combine CloudSwitch's capabilities to any cloud implementation (private-to-public, public-to-public and hybrid) with Terremark's IT and security capabilities to serve it customer base.

Chris Geselle, Chief Cloud Strategist, Verizon, in an interview with FierceTelecom, said the acquisition provides three benefits to its cloud strategy.

While Verizon's acquisition of Terremark instantly scaled its cloud service, CloudSwitch brings ease of adoption to the cloud. What's more, the acquisition helps Verizon bolster its software development capabilities and enable it to serve hybrid private and public cloud implementations.

"Bringing CloudSwitch into the Verizon family furthers our position as a cloud provider," he said. "CloudSwitch enables workloads from the enterprise data center to the cloud, which we think is an important on boarding capability as companies begin to adopt cloud on a significant scale."

Burlington, Ma.-based CloudSwitch has sold its software to large enterprises that wanted a transition strategy to get into the cloud.

"We have software that is bought by large enterprises that have data centers, management and security tools already in place and want to be able to take advantage of cloud services from providers like Terremark," Ellen Rubin, Co-Founder, CloudSwitch. "What's been holding enterprises back are they are concerned about having to rebuild an application for a cloud, security, loss of control over their applications, and that they would be locked into a specific cloud environment."  

Described as a virtual machine, Cloudswitch's software, which can be downloaded from their website and up and running about 20 minutes. From there, the enterprise can use the web-based interface to point and click applications into whatever cloud they want to use.

Rubin emphasized that what's most compelling about the software to enterprises nervous about transitioning into the cloud is that "nothing about the applications, the management, security or networking around the application changes at all."

Rubin added that even after an enterprise's applications are put into the software, they would continue to use it so the application can be connected to the enterprise's tools and policies.

Having been used by both Amazon's EC2 cloud service and in Terremark's vCloud Express cloud service, CloudSwitch, Terremark and Verizon are hardly strangers.

Set to be offered as a product package in the Terremark unit, Geselle said the two companies will be working on a common strategy to serve the hybrid cloud environment.

Verizon's acquisition of CloudSwitch, much like its acquisition of Terremark, is representative of a trend where a growing number of service providers are purchasing cloud service companies to bolster business revenues as traditional landline voice revenue continues to decline.

In its Q2 earnings statement, Verizon reported that its business revenues got a direct boost from cloud services. As the result of its acquisition of Terremark, which added $98 million in revenue, Verizon's global enterprise total global enterprise revenues were $4.0 billion in Q2, a 3.6 percent increase over Q2 2010. 

Neither Verizon nor CloudSwitch revealed the terms of the deal.

For more:
- Mass High Tech has this article

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