Verizon Combines the Power of 4G LTE with the Cisco Cius Tablet to Improve Mobile Enterprise Collaboration

NEW YORK – July 13, 2011 –

The ancient Greeks relied on them. So did Moses when it came to accomplishing one of his most significant deliverables. And now businesses are equipping mobile workforces with tablets of their own to boost productivity and speed customer service.

To meet this newest trend in tablet use, Verizon is combining the power of its 4G LTE network with the Cisco Cius™ to help customers decentralize and accelerate decision-making for better business outcomes.

The Cisco Cius will be available to Verizon enterprise and government customers around the world later this summer, and those located domestically will be able to combine the device with a Verizon Wireless 4G LTE mobile hot spot. Designed for the enterprise, the Android-based Cisco Cius combines voice, video, collaboration and virtualization capabilities on one device.  When powered by Verizon's 4G LTE network, mobile workers will be able to easily use bandwidth-intensive video applications - including between devices - for more effective collaboration.

"Mobile applications over intelligent high-speed networks will continue to eliminate barriers in the workplace," said Mike Smith, vice president for Verizon enterprise communications, network and mobility sales. "We're forecasting a perfect storm where advanced enterprise tools such as the Cisco Cius mesh with the speeds made possible by 4G LTE to make the virtual office a more robust reality than ever." 

Putting Tablets to Work

In general, industries such as retail, financial services, healthcare and government can employ tablets to change the pace of their business.

Retail:  Sales associates can employ tablets while out on the floor to look up product and inventory information for customers, in addition to processing transactions on the spot. Financial Services:  Bankers and financial advisors can take advantage of the video capabilities of tablets for face-to-face meetings with clients, saving the time it takes to meet up at physical locations. Health care:  Medical professionals can use tablets to collaborate on patient care and speed critical decision-making. Government:  Tablets can increase productivity of government users - from military to civilian government field workers to emergency first responders - allowing them to enter information or share it quickly with remote offices to complete the business of government more efficiently.

Through Verizon's Managed Mobility portfolio, enterprise customers can securely deploy a wide range of devices to employees.  Capabilities include device management; expense tracking management; lock and wipe features for protecting sensitive data; and mobile delivery of popular business and consumer apps from the cloud.  In addition, the company offers a full suite of professional services to help organizations create policies and design mobility programs to suit varied requirements. 

Verizon is a global network communications leader in driving better business outcomes for enterprises and government agencies.  Verizon delivers integrated IT and communications solutions via its global IP and mobility networks to enable businesses to securely access information, share content and communicate.  Verizon is rapidly transforming to a cloud-based "everything-as-a-service" delivery model that will put the power of enterprise-class solutions within the reach of every business.  Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, with more than 104 million total connections nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 196,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of $106.6 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Verizon Recognized as a Leader in the U.S. Enterprise Mobility Market

NEW YORK – January 24, 2011 –

IDC has named Verizon Communications as a leader in the U.S. enterprise mobility market in the analyst firm's recently published report, "IDC MarketScape: Mobile Enterprise Services 2010 Vendor Analysis."¹ IDC attributes Verizon's leadership position to the company's "broad range of enterprise and SMB solutions, a renewed focus on customer service and strong network reliability."

The report analyzed the primary wireless operators in the U.S. that serve the enterprise market, examining their current capabilities and the strategies they are using to attract and retain customers, and increase market share.

According to the study, "Today's tech-savvy business customers are more demanding, requiring more than basic voice and data connectivity from their mobile operator partner.  They are searching for a service provider that understands the unique needs of their business and can provide robust, reliable and flexible solutions to meet the changing needs of their company."

IDC notes that Verizon is focused on moving beyond the core access and devices it offers and on taking a more integrated approach to its sales, services and product offerings.

"Today's business culture demands that our customers have secure access to their work 24 hours a day," said Mike Lanman, president of enterprise and government for Verizon Wireless. "Verizon offers fixed/wireless solutions for business continuity, a global managed mobility portfolio, and host of enterprise applications and connected devices such as modems, smartphones and tablets that run on the nation's largest 3G network and our industry-leading 4G network."

About IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor's position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

¹ "IDC MarketScape: Mobile Enterprise Services 2010 Vendor Analysis ", by Carrie MacGillivray, IDC document # 225770, December 2010

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving more than 93 million customers nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers innovative, seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 195,000.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Verizon Introduces New Mobile Services Enablement Platform to Help Businesses Develop, Mobilize, Manage Applications Across a Global Enterprise

NEW YORK – November 16, 2010 –

Multinational corporations want to provide mobile workers with access to key business applications, but must navigate an often complex mix of existing and emerging technology standards.  To help customers address this challenge, Verizon is introducing a new Mobile Services Enablement Platform that helps enterprises design their applications for a mobile environment so that workers can access the applications across different devices - and have the same experience as when the applications are accessed from a desktop environment.

(Note: Listen to an audio podcast about this new enterprise mobility solution.)

The Mobile Services Enablement Platform (MSEP) is the latest addition to Verizon's Managed Mobility portfolio, which enables on-the-go professionals to securely and seamlessly conduct business where and when they need to.  This innovative platform provides a flexible way for organizations to design, develop and manage mobile business applications across multiple devices and carriers. 

In addition to providing customizable application-development templates that can be tailored to create new business-specific applications, the platform is already integrated with major enterprise software applications including Siebel, SAP, Oracle, Remedy, Salesforce.com and Amdocs.  As a result, individuals can have a similar experience with these capabilities whether accessing them from an office or remotely.

"To enable a truly borderless enterprise, businesses need to arm mobile workers with secure access to the applications essential for their day-to-day operations," said Carrie Gray, executive director of solutions marketing for Verizon.  "With this new offering, Verizon now offers one of the industry's most comprehensive managed mobility solutions to help our customers innovate and execute a successful mobile-workforce strategy."

According to the October 28 Forrester Research report, "Managing Mobile Complexity," "enterprises are prioritizing mobility initiatives as a key strategic focus, expanding the use of smartphone devices, and investing in a range of mobile applications to address the needs of information workers." In looking at the coming year, according to the independent report, 46 percent of companies surveyed identify supporting more mobile applications for out-of-office users as a key priority, and 33 percent identify supporting more mobile applications for employees who work in the office, as a key priority.

As mobile application development and delivery become more complex, Verizon is prepared to help customers every step of the way.  The company's IT Professional Services have helped some of the world's leading enterprises conquer challenges associated with managing dispersed technologies and evolving business processes, maintaining consistent application performance, and providing secure access to information.  The professional services underlying the new MSEP solution feature enterprise mobility assessment, enterprise mobility business process engineering, enterprise mobile application development and testing, and enterprise mobile application certification. 

Users also have access to world-class customer care and support via the Managed Mobility Portal, part of the award-winning Verizon Enterprise Center, a one-stop shop for service and account management, information and support.

Verizon Managed Mobility Services Portfolio

The Verizon Managed Mobility portfolio leverages the technology and expertise of leading mobility vendors, including Sybase, an SAP company and industry leader in enterprise mobile software. The Sybase Unwired Platform, which is managed and maintained by Verizon, enables the synchronization and delivery of information between mobile devices and customers' back-end enterprise applications.

Leveraging the strength of its world-class IP and wireless networks, the Verizon Managed Mobility portfolio is designed to improve mobility programs in five key areas, enabling enterprises to subscribe to one or more of the following modules:

MSEP - Supports mobile enterprise applications by enabling the deployment of new and enhanced applications, as well as the mobilization of business processes and traditional desktop applications. Mobile Device Management - Delivers tools, applications and data to employees, where and when required, and creates and enforces flexible mobile policies across devices, groups or individual users. Mobile Security - Enforces access codes; establishes "lock/wipe" policies by which devices that are stolen or lost can be locked by the administrator and data wiped out; encrypts devices and data cards; delivers firewall and antivirus applications; and supports mobile access to corporate applications. Inventory and Expense Management - Tracks mobile assets, usage and spending.  Delivers consolidated and departmental reporting, as well as auditing, electronic billing and chargeback information for accounting purposes.  The same platform can also track global wireline telecom spending. Logistics - Automates procurement workflow and device deployments across carriers via a centralized procurement portal.  Defines approved devices by work group or function, and procures devices and tracks ordering process.

Verizon Managed Mobility services are available throughout the U.S. and in many countries in Europe, with plans to roll out the services in the Asia-Pacific region early next year.  The services, which can be purchased individually or altogether, are sold by the enterprise sales forces of Verizon Business and Verizon Wireless.

About Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving more than 93 million customers nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers innovative, seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 195,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of more than $107 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Integrating the cloud with the enterprise

To cloud or not to cloud - that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler to run one's own SAN or to suffer the T&Cs of a cloud server and take arms against a sea of lawyers that are opposed to reasonable SLAs and by opposing lose your business?

It's one of the most vexing questions facing IT executives today? How much infrastructure should we outsource? And like the Danish prince, will we lose sleep over the decision? It's a decision that strikes at the core of effective service delivery for CIOs trying to deliver the most bang for buck in the post GFC recovery.

It's clear that the GFC of 2009 affected technology delivery organisations. For example, IDC has surveyed CIOs for over 15 years, asking them who they report to in the executive suite. Until 2008, the statistics consistently showed that about half of the senior IT executives in businesses reported to someone other than the CEO. But in 2008, there was a massive shift with almost 75% of CIOs reporting to the CEO. Clearly, there was a huge shift happening. But the GFC hit and things returned to the old status quo.

Tim Dillon, AVP Asia Pacific End User & Mobility Research with IDC says that the GFC arrested that shift. CFOs took control again as they like "relatively stable capex and opex. The GFC drove a lot of interest in the cloud with structured cost models".

Gartner's research, from their 2011 CIO Agenda Survey, confirmed that IT budgets were stable, increasing by less than 2%. That push to greater financial restraint has seen cloud computing moving to become the highest priority item on CIO roadmaps

Look at processes
The investment in cloud services isn't as simple as copying a bunch of data to some external storage array and reaping the benefits of reduced costs. As the official Head Geek at SolarWinds, Josh Stephens says that one of the keys is "to invest in the process. In times of technical change we focus too much on the technology and not enough on the process. It's especially important in the areas cloud, both public and private virtualisation and storage, that there's a focus on process because the changes that are being made in how we are supporting technology are pretty dramatic".

Clive Gold, the Marketing CTO for EMC Corporation, Australia and New Zealand says that while the cost benefits are often the driver for looking at cloud solutions, there are many other benefits that can be realised. "Distribution of information and having information online wherever you are at almost local network speed. The first thing we find is that they miss this as a potential benefit".

EMC has been working with a TV station recently. When they receive content from a producer overseas they find that could services act as an electronic replacement for the way they used to ship film and tape rather than using the cloud as a distribution and management system. Because of this, they miss on some of the potential benefits.

Where is the cloud?
Often, there's a perception that cloud services are housed overseas, raising concerns that sensitive data might be held in countries where data security and access laws are not understood. In turn, this puts companies ill at ease so the potential benefits are lost. However, many cloud storage providers such as Telstra, Optus and Melbourne IT house their storage in Australia. "People don't realise how much of this is available from suppliers that we know and trust" says Gold.

Melbourne IT's Chief Technology Officer Glenn Gore says that his customers like being able to work with a local cloud provider for a couple of reasons. "Hosting within Australia is important for some applications and the type of data they're using needs to be located in Australia. Also, the support side is important. They want an organisation that is right-sized for them. They want a company that's stable but small enough if they want to talk to a real human for support".

Managing the Cloud
Businesses implementing cloud solutions need the right people with the required skills and doing tasks that are different to the traditional IT role. Stephens says that "With so much thin provisioning in the virtualisation layer and with storage area networks there are a lot of performance gains to be had from real-time optimisation. While in many cases you can decrease the number of lower-level system administrators and network administrators that you might have because of virtualisation and cloud computing, what you need to invest in is senior level infrastructure specialists. Someone who understands, at a very technical level, networking, systems, virtualisation and storage all together because it's a new tier of infrastructure we've not seen before. It requires someone who can think on their feet and can envision those architectures working together".

Risk Management
With fewer physical devices, the risk profile for the technology changes. In the past, when a single piece of hardware failed, only a single function or application was affected. Although virtualisation has delivered cost savings, it has meant that the loss of a single piece of hardware can lead to several services being affected simultaneously.

For management, that means there's a need to ensure that resource usage is closely monitored so that potential issues are addressed before they impact the business.
An aspect of cloud service management is thinking about what to do if your cloud provider goes belly up? Or what if you device to move from one provider to another? Anyone who went through the outsourcing boom of the 1990s will know that moving services from one place to another is a tricky business. That's where the idea of standards becomes important.
Gore, from Melbourne IT, talks about the "Cloud Data Tax". Transferring terabytes of data can be very expensive. Like roaming data charges with mobile phones, shifting data between cloud providers can cost significant amounts and these are rarely considered before choosing a service provider.

Cloud services are relatively new. As such, early players to the market adopted their own systems with scant consideration given to cross-platform compatibility. In the rush to realise the financial and performance benefits, businesses started using cloud storage with little consideration to planning for migration to different service providers. The Storage Networks Industry Association, or SNIA, has developed the Cloud Data Management Interface as a standard for how data is stored in cloud services.

Tim Sheedy, Senior Analyst & Advisor, CIO Group at Forrester Research, says that while businesses may use several different cloud and SaaS apps, the IT department will need to act as an integrator. "It will use their SOA capability to create a single log-in for all the apps and a single way to identify customers across all the apps". The CIO will need to set up that organisation and to find the people to deliver the solutions and deliver the anticipated efficiencies.

This was first published in April 2011

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