Verizon plays catch up with new cloud compute, storage offerings

Verizon is rebooting its cloud efforts today with the launch of Verizon Cloud, a new infrastructural service comprised of Verizon Cloud Compute and Verizon Cloud Storage.

With this new public cloud service, the telecommunications giant is entering the market years behind competitors like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. But Verizon Cloud offers more fine-tuned control than any other cloud solution, the company claims.

“We developed software to specifically address the need for enterprises to have great flexibility and control regarding virtual machine provisioning, performance guarantees, and security,” a Verizon spokesperson told VentureBeat. “And Verizon Cloud is backed by our global cloud data centers, global IP network, and enterprise-grade managed security services — no other player in the market has this combination of services and capabilities.”

Instead of choosing from pre-set virtual machine configurations, Verizon Cloud customers can request a specific amount of compute, memory, and storage capacity.

“We put an unprecedented level of control in the hands of the customer, who only pays for what they use, and we guarantee that the performance of mission-critical applications will be consistent and predictable,” Verizon told VentureBeat.

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Unlike Verizon’s existing Enterprise Cloud, which relies on VMware virtualization, this new offering is built with proprietary technology — most of which comes from Terremark, a cloud technologies company Verizon acquired in 2011. Verizon also acquired a company called CloudSwitch in 2011, which helped Verizon integrate multi-hypervisor support into its new cloud service.

Presently, Verizon Cloud only supports its custom eCloud API, but the company plans to integrate CloudStack and Amazon Web Services compatibility down the line.

Verizon promises robust security and encryption for Verizon Cloud, but declined to discuss what access the U.S. government might have to data on its servers. (Pssst, Verizon: the government is shut down right now, it’s totally not paying attention. You can tell us!)

A few customers, like platform-as-a-service provider Engine Yard, already have access to Verizon Cloud. The service is scheduled to open to the public in beta form by year’s end. And at this time Verizon has yet to confirm an exact pricing tier.