Verizon may not want to move its mobile core to the public cloud, but the operator clearly sees value in leveraging such infrastructure for other parts of its business. The operator announced its Verizon Connect telematics software now runs fully on Amazon Web Services (AWS) rather than in its own data centers, a shift one executive said will allow it to focus on developing better IP for its products and attract top talent.
Nick Power is CTO of Verizon Connect. He told Fierce the shift to AWS has been in the works for some time, having started back before Verizon acquired Fleetmatics and Telogis in 2016 to build its telematics business. But that work was dragging on and about two years ago the operator decided to do what’s called a “lift and shift” rather than continue a gradual migration. He said it began by transitioning its operation in Europe, a project which took about six months and wrapped up in February 2021. It then took the learnings from that move to tackle its U.S. operation, starting that work in April of last year.
With the “lift and shift” complete, Power said Verizon Connect is now turning its attention to retooling its Connect Reveal platform to utilize AWS services like serverless computing.
Power said the motivation for Verizon Connect’s move was multi-faceted. First and foremost, he noted the shift will allow the unit to focus on product development rather than the underlying infrastructure its services are stacked on top of.
Divisions like Verizon Connect and the operator’s BlueJeans unit are “SaaS businesses and you don’t want SaaS businesses spending a lot of money on infrastructure, you want them building IP, which is the product itself.”
“We want to focus our engineers on adding features to the product rather than managing the hybrid it’s hosted on. Public cloud companies do this much better than any of us,” he continued. “They have the scale, they have the expertise and then we don’t have to go invest in those skills.”
The shift to the public cloud also provides benefits for disaster recovery and continuity, security and time to market, he added. On the latter point, Power noted public cloud players like AWS offer services which companies like Verizon Connect can use to cut down on the amount of code they need to write to get new products out the door.
Additionally, being able to say it’s shifting to a serverless architecture is a boon for talent recruitment.
“That is how we attract talent as well. When people know we’re 100% on the cloud, we’re going serverless, we’re using more of Amazon’s services, that’s exactly what people want to hear, what they want to work in now,” he concluded.
Verizon and AWS have a history of collaboration. The operator previously partnered with the cloud giant for its rollout of mobile edge computing capabilities.