Verizon Business incorporates Ethernet into its managed network lineup

By adding Ethernet to its managed service portfolio, Verizon Business has recognized that while more business customers are embracing Ethernet, they would like to have a partner help manage it so they can focus on their own core competency.

Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) Managed WAN portfolio supports all of its traditional Ethernet flavors including Ethernet Private Line Service (EPL), Ethernet Virtual Private Line Service (EVPL) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS). In addition, customers that adopt Private IP Layer 2 services will be able to take of the new managed offering.

While Verizon Business has been simultaneously offering Ethernet and managed services for a number of years, Danellie Young, Director, Networking Solutions, Verizon Business, said the new offering is about making sure they can take care of their customers using Ethernet end-to-end.

"We're rounding out the portfolio so that customers know as they come to us we can guide them on the right service from a technology perspective by identifying things like what kind of service performance they need, Class of Service (CoS), security, and protocol handling," Young said. "They make that choice first and then we help guide the on whether they would like to manage for us to manage it."

So what's driving the ongoing adoption of managed services? While every business different, Young noted that what's been driving more adoption of managed services is the ability for businesses to cut costs by outsourcing various IT functions to a partner like Verizon Business.

"In this economy, we have seen a steady stream of demand for managed services," she said. "You could come up with a variety of reasons for that but I do think it comes down to cost and efficiency and making sure they are streamlining their business as best they can and outsourcing their IT resources."   

Customers that opt for Verizon's Managed WAN portfolio have three levels of management that takes into account that every customer wants their own level of managed service:

  • Monitor/Notify: In this scenario, Verizon will monitor and isolate faults, notify the customer and fix the issue, but if its CPE device that's broken, the customer will take ownership.
  • Physical Management: With Physical Management, Verizon will help the enterprise manage the service and take on more responsibility for those devices should they have any issues and provide backup configuration for them.
  • Full Management: As a full outsourced model, Verizon will manage the Ethernet circuit end to end.

While each offering brings its own degree of management, Verizon will provide performance monitoring and reporting in partnership with Computer Associates' (CA) e-health reporting suite.

"All of our customers, no matter if they're monitor/notify, physical or full, will be able to get all of the reporting information," Young said.      

For more:
- see the release

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