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Verizon Business is enhancing its cloud computing offering with such capabilities as server cloning and greater operating system support.
Verizon announced the enhancements to its Cloud as a Service-or CAAS-solution April 15.
The server cloning feature enables IT administrators to customize a virtual server within CAAS and then create a reference-or “golden”-server image that can then be used to more quickly deploy other VMs, according to Verizon officials.
Server cloning will reduce the need to manually create the same server image every time an administrator wants to deploy a virtual machine.
In addition, CAAS-which was launched in June 2009-now supports Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system as a standard offering. In addition, Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 is now a “click to provision” database option, according to the company.
Verizon also is offering greater networking options. Such options include virtual routers and shared VPNs (virtual private networks), including Verizon Private IP, which will enable IT administrators to more easily connect back-end servers to Verizon CAAS through an online portal.
Enterprises also can get extra networking capacity on-demand by buying metered bandwidth up to 1Gbps to meet the demands created when temporary computing capacity goes online.
Verizon officials also said a third-party audit done using the SAS 70 Type II examination method that showed that they had the necessary controls and processes to manage their CAAS platform.
“With the addition of new features and the completion of the SA 70 Type II data center audit, we re continuing the investment in our flagship cloud offering as enterprise clients increasingly look to cloud computing to fundamentally change the way they consume IT resources,” Joseph Crawford, executive director of IT solutions at Verizon business, said in a statement.
Verizon officials said the cloud computing space will continue to grow, quoting an IDC report that said cloud services market revenues will increase from $46.4 billion in 2010 to $150.1 billion by 2013.
Verizon in March teamed up with IBM to launch Managed Data Vault, a cloud server and software offering that offer secure daily backups for any amount of business data.