Verizon, IBM Team Up On Enterprise Cloud Storage Service

The service, Managed Data Vault, is a new private cloud storage service for customers of Verizon Business who have engaged the company to build a private network, which the company said helps keep customer data private.

With Managed Data Vault, customers get an end-to-end storage solution for automatically transferring data to an off-site data center via the Verizon private network. The data is backed up and protected with encryption, and is available for high-speed recovery, said Laura Elliott, manager of IT solutions for the company.

IBM is handling the back-end management and security of the storage, Elliott said. Both companies can sell the Managed Data Vault service to their customers, she said.

Managed Data Vault is priced based on the number of GBs of data which are protected by the service. Options include encryption, data replication, help with manual data restores, and the ability to set specific retention periods for the data, Elliott said.

The new storage service is the latest move by Verizon Business to move towards more of a cloud computing model, Elliott said.

"This is another step in our move to offer everything as a service," she said.

The Managed Data Vault service will be initially open to customers in the metropolitan New York area, and will eventually spread throughout the country, Elliott said. Resellers and integrators who partner with Verizon Business will eventually be able to offer Managed Data Vault to their enterprise customers, she said.