New Capabilities, Strategic Partnerships Position Verizon to Help Drive Better Business Outcomes for Customers

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., April 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Business during the first quarter continued to build on its managed IT and communications solutions leadership while expanding its array of professional consulting services to help businesses prepare for growth as the global economy recovers.  

Highlights included new strategic agreements for cloud-based data backup and smart-grid solutions; expanded managed mobility and communications solutions for key vertical industries; and new IT and communications professional consulting services. In addition to enhancing its offerings for multinational corporate and government customers, the company also rolled out new capabilities for serving the medium-sized business market.  

"As the business climate begins to improve, our continued focus on high-performance solutions positions us to help our customers achieve better business results and capitalize on new growth opportunities," said Kerry Bailey, Verizon Business chief marketing officer.  "We continue to reinforce our core strengths and assemble the vital components that will underlie our 'everything-as-a-service' strategy, including establishing and building on strategic-partner relationships."

Verizon Business during the quarter also continued to expand its thought leadership in the managed security arena.  The company publicly released the research framework used for its landmark Data Breach Investigations Reports, providing a critical common standard for the collection of security-incident data and analysis that will make it easy for companies to unite in the fight against cybercrime.

Continued Focus on High-Performance Solutions

Verizon Business delivered new capabilities supporting the convergence of IP and IT during the quarter including:

• A new private cloud service – Managed Data Vault – offered through an expanded strategic relationship with IBM that provides secure, quick and reliable daily backups, and fast recovery of enterprise information.  Available from both companies, the new solution is designed to automatically transfer data from a client location to a specially designed off-site data center via Verizon's secure high-speed private network.
• A managed mobility solution designed to help government agencies manage and secure their mobile assets. The solution, Verizon's Mobility Management for Government (MMG), helps agencies protect physical and intellectual assets while meeting the unique security mandates of federal agencies and other public institutions.
• Expanded IT consulting services that give IT administrators a high-level overview of each layer of the IT "stack" – network, data, applications and users.  The Verizon IT Analysis Service enables customers to better pinpoint performance and security issues, identify cost savings, and better plan for future growth.
• A new application management service that offers enterprises end-to-end management of SAP applications and delivery platforms.  The service enables enterprises to more effectively deploy and manage essential SAP applications such as financial analysis and logistics management while reducing complexity and controlling costs.  
• Expanded unified communications and collaboration consulting services that help enterprises better integrate UC&C technologies into their business processes to achieve better performance. The company also introduced Verizon Immersive Video Conferencing Service for Cisco TelePresence™ and closer integration of its popular IP Trunking service with Microsoft Office Communications Server to help customers take advantage of IP telephony and real-time UC desktop applications.
• A new voice-over-Internet-protocol offering that enables businesses to maintain a consistent local face while directing overflow calls, as needed, to off-site customer service representatives or other retail locations. The new offering, Verizon VoIP Inbound with Local Originations, provides a local phone number with powerful call manager functionality traditionally used for toll-free phone numbers.
• A new integrated suite of security services, offered from McAfee, that helps medium-sized businesses protect against network, endpoint, Web, data and e-mail security threats for a monthly per-user fee.
• A wireless broadband backup solution for small and medium-sized businesses – Verizon Internet Dedicated Access with Mobile Broadband – that automatically routes Internet traffic to the Verizon Wireless 3G EV-DO wireless network in the event of a service disruption.  

Expanded Focus on Vertical Industries

Verizon continued its increasing focus on key vertical markets during the first quarter, including the rollout of new capabilities:

• An information technology platform, the Verizon Medical Data Exchange, that enables the digital sharing of physician-dictated patient notes.  Previously, the lack of an interoperable, nationally available platform made it difficult to share such notes, which primarily form the basis of electronic health records.
• An agreement with CURRENT Group under which the companies will jointly deliver integrated smart grid solutions for electric utilities.
• A managed wireless security service offered in conjunction with Motorola Inc. that will be available via Verizon's Framework for Retail, a technology platform that Verizon Business is designing to help retailers improve their IT performance and enhance their business processes.  

Network Leadership and Global Expansion

Verizon Business continues to invest in its leading global network, which underpins the essential network computing platform for the company's integrated solutions. Network developments during the quarter included:

• Installing 11 additional Private IP edge routers for a total of 763 edge routers in 215 sites throughout 59 countries including the expansion into Hanoi which provides city diversity in Vietnam and adding a diverse site in Shanghai to enhance Verizon Business' MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) leadership position in China;
• Upgrading its Private IP network core backbone into three additional Latin American locations – Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Santiago, Chile, which quadruples the backbone bandwidth into Latin American in support of customer growth and higher access speeds, while improving resiliency and positioning the network for expansions into additional cities;
• Installing eight new Converged Packet Architecture (CPA) switches including three new diverse sites in Pittsburgh, Pa; Seoul, South Korea; and Shanghai, China; and five new cities in Pune, India; Hamburg and Munich, Germany; and Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam. This brings the total number of CPA switches to 142 in 125 sites in 33 countries.

Verizon Business Industry Recognition

Industry experts continued to recognize Verizon Business' global capabilities during the quarter.  This recognition included:

• Gartner Inc. placed Verizon Business in the Leaders quadrant in several reports during the quarter.  These included:  "Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers,"(1) "Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service Providers,"(2) and "Magic Quadrant for Communications Outsourcing and Professional Services, Worldwide."(3)  Separately, Gartner named Verizon a visionary in another report, "Unified Communications as a Service, North America Magic Quadrant."(4)
• Intel Corporation named Verizon Business among its 2009 Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award winners – the only communications service provider among the 10 companies receiving the prestigious supplier award.  
• Cisco awarded Verizon several specializations during the quarter, recognizing that the company has fulfilled certain training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support Cisco technologies.  These included the Master Unified Communications Specialization, the Advanced Data Center Networking Infrastructure Specialization and the Cisco Master Security Specialization.
• Polycom Inc. named Verizon Business Global Service Provider of the Year, North America, recognizing the company for its outstanding sales performance and excellence in meeting customer solution, service and support needs.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties or merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with one of the world's most connected IP networks to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees — enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Many of the world's largest businesses and governments — including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions — rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

VERIZON'S ONLINE NEWS CENTER: Verizon news releases, executive speeches and biographies, media contacts, high-quality video and images, and other information are available at Verizon's News Center on the World Wide Web at www.verizon.com/news.  To receive news releases by e-mail, visit the News Center and register for customized automatic delivery of Verizon news releases.

SOURCE Verizon Business

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