Verizon adds HP, Salesforce to cloud interconnect portfolio

Verizon Enterprise Solutions (NYSE: VZ) continues to play into the bring-your-own-cloud mentality by now carrying its Secure Cloud Interconnect (SCI) service over the HP Helion Managed Cloud Service and the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.

Some of the advantages that Verizon could bring to HP and Salesforce customers are the scale of its platform and self-service features, including dynamic bandwidth allocation, strong security (encryption), application performance throughput and quality-of-service options. They will also gain access to Verizon's on-demand provisioning capability, which it says can reduce deployment time and maintenance time.

Since it launched the SCI service in April, which initially included access to Verizon Cloud and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure, the service provider has added four additional cloud service providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS) (NASDAQ: AMZN), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), and now HP and Salesforce to its platform.

While Verizon is hardly alone in working with cloud providers, these latest agreements with HP and Saleforce represent a necessary requirement for any service provider that wants to play in the cloud services industry segment.  

In its State of the Market: Enterprise Cloud 2014" report, Verizon revealed that while more enterprises are adopting cloud services, they want to use a mixture of providers. By using a number of different players, enterprises can gain the benefit from the "best-of-breed" values that different providers offer while avoiding "putting all their eggs in one basket." 

Fellow telco AT&T has followed a similar path. As part of its user-cloud strategy, the service provider has established partnerships with other players like CSC and Salesforce to deliver a joint cloud service solution for their global enterprise customers. Similarly, competitive providers like Level 3 have established similar partnerships with Amazon and Microsoft to drive more customers to its cloud platforms.

Being able to drive more partners into its cloud portfolio comes at a time when Verizon is trying to scale its cloud services business and enterprise revenue to help offset legacy service declines. In the third quarter of 2014, sales of strategic services such as private IP, Ethernet, data center, cloud, security and managed services to enterprise customers rose 3 percent year-over-year.

For more:
- see the release

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