Verizon shutters two public cloud services amidst competition from AWS, Google

Verizon (NYSE: VZ) plans to stop offering two of its public cloud service offerings in March, signaling the challenges of being able to effectively compete against providers like Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Specifically, Verizon will no longer support its Verizon Public Cloud Reserved Performance and its Marketplace. The carrier said that customers have the option to move their data to the telco's Virtual Private Cloud offering.

In a notice sent to customers by Verizon and posted on Twitter by Kenn White, who appears to be a public cloud customer, Verizon said the Virtual Private Cloud service offers "the cost effectiveness of a multi-tenant public cloud but includes added levels of configuration, control, and support capabilities …"

Existing public cloud customers have until April 12 to find an alternative service as the telco said that any content or data on the service following that day "will be irrecoverably deleted."

However, Verizon's Cloud Storage users will not be affected by this change.

Verizon's move comes at a time when the company is looking to define its role in the cloud services market.

Although the telco made a big splash into the cloud services market when it purchase Terremark in 2011 for its data center capabilities followed by Cloud Switch, a report emerged in January that the service provider is looking to sell its data center assets in a deal that could fetch about $2.5 billion.

For more:
- Fortune has this article

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