Verizon plans Canberra data centre for cloud storage

Verizon Business has added hosted storage to its line of enterprise IT services, revealing plans to expand its Australian co-location centre to accommodate future cloud customers.

Today, it unveiled the Verizon Cloud Service, will offer businesses a pay as you go, per-Gigabyte payment model from July.

The company said that it will offer in-house and third-party tools to access and manage the service as well as API's for companies looking to develop their own applications.

It will also launch a Data Retention Services consulting service to help companies set up and establish policies and management controls on stored data.

Initially, Verizon Cloud Service customers will be offered a choice of three locations at which their data may be stored, including three data centres in North America, one in Tokyo and one in Germany.

The second phase of Verizon's computing-as-a-service push will see the company establishing more data centres worldwide.

According to Ray McQuillan, Principle Consultant for Verizon Business' Global Services Practice, the company will focus on markets with concerns about offshoring data, or high demand for storage in the cloud.

New Cloud Service nodes would likely grow from existing Verizon-owned facilities, including a co-location facility in the Canberra suburb of Fyshwick that currently served public sector customers.

"We have multiple Australian customers using Verizon's computing-as-a-service [CaaS] platforms in the U.S. and Amsterdam," McQuillan told iTnews.

"CaaS Data centres in Australia is definitely on the roadmap," he said.

Despite reports of security and reliability concerns surrounding cloud computing services, Verizon Business forecasts a "robust" market for Cloud Storage in Australia and worldwide.

The company's executive director of IT solutions product management Joseph S. Crawford described Verizon Cloud Service as "yet another example of our vision to deliver IT services via an 'as-a-service' model".

"The current methods of storing huge and growing volumes of enterprise data are simply not sustainable from either a cost or management perspective," he said.