Verizon Ending Public Cloud Services: What are Customer’s Options?

Last month, Verizon announced that it would be shutting down two of its Public Cloud services after several years of operation. The offerings to be affected are those which accept credit cards as payment: Verizon Public Cloud Reserved Performance and Marketplace. Customers of the Verizon Cloud Storage service will not be affected.

These changes will go into effect on April 12, 2016.

With little less than a month to find an alternative, subscribers must find a replacement service quickly or else have their data “irrecoverably deleted,” to quote Verizon. And while customers have the option to migrate their data within the Verizon cloud ecosystem to the company’s private cloud offering, it may be worth considering to migrate to an alternative platform for public cloud services.

According to network researcher Kenn White, migrating between Verizon’s public and private cloud offerings can prove difficult due differences in hardware and API. This essentially means that transferring data would not be a simple drag and drop from one location to another, as some compatibility issues may exist. Additionally, there may be some pricing disparity between what you get for the same computing power, as private cloud is typically more expensive.

The public cloud platforms that the Verizon public cloud was competing with, however, could prove to be a much cheaper alternative. There is little doubt that the competitive pricing of such competition helped shutter the Verizon offerings, in addition to the greater utility offered.

Microsoft Azure is one such alternative that current Verizon public cloud customers may find to be an ideal host for their data. With a large number of pre-configured server images to choose from, businesses would have an easier time selecting a hosting environment that matches what they are currently using. As a result, customers would likely experience less of a challenge and risk in migrating data from the Verizon public cloud.

Another upside of utilizing Azure public cloud would be the use of Azure Site Recovery, which would allow the shift from one host to another be as seamless as possible. Through this function of the platform, customers are able to replicate their full environment to the cloud as a functional network. Once adequate testing and configuration is completed, automatic failover to the Azure environment can be initiated as soon as the Verizon hosting is shut down.

And by hosting in a Microsoft managed environment comes the built in integration with other Microsoft products, such as Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility Suite. Similarly, Microsoft has begun to play nicely with other products in recent years, offing high levels of compatibility with many server frameworks and services.

With the shutdown of the Verizon public cloud looming, it is important that subscribers to the service move fast. As a certified Microsoft Cloud Platform partner, Metro CSG can help businesses migrate from Verizon Public Cloud into the Microsoft cloud. In addition to offering a seamless, headache free transition into a new environment, our team can help configure the cloud environment that will offer the most utility for the lowest price.