But it's sticking with enterprise cloud services.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

February 12, 2016

3 Min Read
Verizon Pulls Plug on Public Cloud

As foretold by Light Reading, Verizon is pulling the plug on its public cloud offering, sending a notice to its customers that the service is going away in April.

"As we continue to focus on the enterprise market, we're discontinuing the niche cloud service that accepted individual credit card swipes on April 12," the company said in an email statement to Light Reading. "We have an enterprise-class range of cloud services including multi-tenant offerings such as cloud storage and virtual private cloud for enterprise and government customers. We're making significant investments in our cloud platform in 2016."

Security researcher Kenn White tweeted a notice he'd received from Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) on Twitter:

Gartner analyst alum Chris Gaun responded:

We told you in May that both AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Enterprise Solutions were dropping their public cloud portfolios and instead focusing on the enterprise -- specifically, customers looking for high reliability and secure access to multiple clouds in a hybrid environment. (See Verizon Says Focused Cloud Strategy Working.)

Meanwhile, CRN is reporting that Verizon is in talks with Google about forming a strategic partnership to target hybrid cloud customers. One option on the table is a Verizon-branded hybrid service that would run on Google's public cloud. In that case, Verizon could still offer some of the cost benefits of a public cloud solution without actually operating that part of the service itself.

Verizon and Google declined to comment on the report.

The decision by Verizon comes as carriers change their cloud strategies in the face of overwhelming market dominance by public cloud providers Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Google and particularly Amazon Web Services Inc. . Everybody outside of that group is turning to hybrid cloud or SaaS as a go-forward strategy. AT&T is partnering with IBM on hosted and cloud services. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shuttered its public cloud in January, and is focusing on private and managed clouds. And VMware is focusing on cloud services rather than providing its own cloud platform. (See VMware Exits Virtustream Cloud Partnership .)

Carriers including AT&T, Windstream Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: WIN), CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) and -- reportedly -- Verizon, are also changing their data center strategies, looking to outsource data center ownership and operations. (See How Data Center Outsourcing Fuels AT&T NetBond Growth and Verizon Seeks $2.5B From Data Center Sale – Report.)

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— Mitch Wagner, Circle me on Google+ Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profileFollow me on Facebook, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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