Verizon Business A/NZ area vice president, John Karabin (centre), speaks to the media about the vendor's expanding Cloud presence in Australia
Verizon is well recognised in its home turf in the US, particular for its mobile telco business and challenges in getting Apple to release its iPhone for its CDMA network, but it is still relatively unknown in Australia.
Verizon Business A/NZ area vice president, John Karabin, admits that the company's clients in Australia have so far only extended to the federal government including defence, multinational customers that come to Australia, and local enterprise customers, typically retail and resources sectors, which has kept the vendor out of the spotlight.
However, Karabin says this might change next year as the vendor looks to expand its Cloud presence in Australia, with a special interest in the hybrid Cloud.
“There is an increasing need for availability, and a lot of cost issues are driving people to look at different ways to deploy services more succinctly,” he said.
Karabin also points to the change from capex to opex type thinking leading business to consider the Cloud.
However, legacy technology - both hardware and software - in Australia has been slowing down adoption.
“There is also the lack of experience and [conservative attitude] due to concerns about how their business models will shift,” Karabin said.
The hybrid Cloud, which harnesses the abilities of both the public and private Cloud, is where he sees future growth.
In addition to the Cloud, the growth of mobility is something Verizon Business will continue to keep an eye on next year.
With Forrester finding that 66 per cent of employees using two or more mobile devices for work, Karabin says it is no surprise work and private lives have been brought closer together.
The way applications are generated, the way companies are hooking up to Cloud based mobile applications, and companies allowing their employees to take their work home with them are also trends driving mobile device take up.
As mobile network increases in reliability and bandwidth, Karabin says a massive take up will occur in that area.
“It is driven by efficiency in the workplace, and that drive is forcing companies to look at ways to redeploy their workforce,” he said.
Coming Cloud
An area where Verizon Business has seen growth this year has been in its network services, which Karabin says has been in the “double digits.”
“Distributive data type of applications supported by Cloud have been driving the uptake of network services,” he said.
Another area of double digit growth for Verizon Business in Australia has been in the application space, which includes security.
“In that area, we have a couple of pedigrees,” Karabin said.
For one, the vendor runs managed security services, such as large gateways, on behalf of its customers.
“We deploy a lot of professional services in that area, such as threat risk, vulnerability, compliance,” he said.
Cloud is the other key area of growth for the provider, with plans to bring its own public Cloud presence in Australia after already establishing Clouds in the US and Asia.
“Business in Australia has tended to be locally focused, but that is shifting rapidly,” Karabin said.
“Having global network capabilities in target markets is becoming important.”
While Verizon Business has partnerships and works with partners in Australia, Karabin says the vendor works direct and has “not really gone for a channel model.”
“We have mainly concentrated on the top tier of the market with enterprises,” he said.
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