CenturyLink Cuts Cloud Prices, Touts Power

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CenturyLink Builds Business on Acquisitions

Qwest, Savvis, Ciber, Tier 3, and AppFog all factor into today's CenturyLink Cloud strategy.

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tojofay 5/1/2014 | 11:22:48 AM

" investing heavily in the infrastructure " Large scale phontonic integrated circuits- PICS- From Infinera

http://www.infinera.com/pdfs/analyst_reports/Analyst_Reports-CenturyLink_Deploys_Infineras_DTN-X.pdf

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Mitch Wagner 5/1/2014 | 3:47:18 PM

Threading a needle

Cutting prices are of course a good way to generate market share. And enterprises move to cloud to reduce spending, so that it makes sense that CenturyLink would be more attractive at a reduced price.

However, cost custs can also backfire, and lead customers to fail to take a supplier seriously. "If it's that cheap, it can't be any good." That's a marketing needle that needs to be threaded.

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Carol Wilson 5/1/2014 | 3:49:09 PM

Re: Threading a needle In this case, CenturyLink is acknowledging that AWS, as far and away the market leader, sets the pricing bar and to compete, they need to be under that.

I don't think the pricing strategy will cause them to be taken less seriously - the question is more likely whether the market will respond as they hope.

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Mitch Wagner 5/2/2014 | 3:28:36 PM

Re: Threading a needle Verizon is positioning itself as a different market than Amazon. Amazon is IaaS, while Verizon offers true hybrid cloud. It remains to be seen whether customers will perceive Verizon that way.

Verizon has an accurate read on the future of the market. As markets mature, they begin to fragment. We now understand that the "software" market is not one thing -- Angry Birds doesn't compete with Oracle. The cloud market will fragment in the same way. The question is whether Verizon is ahead of the market here?

Yes, I know we were talking about CenturyLink here. But I filed a story on Verizon yesterday so I have that company on the brain.

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