Verizon | Investor Relations | Investor News

Verizon Business continued during the third quarter to deploy new building blocks for its integrated global solutions while growing its professional consulting capabilities and expanding its offerings in key international markets.

Highlights of the quarter included a new set of managed mobility offerings, next-generation managed security services, expanded cloud computing capabilities and a series of global network enhancements. These moves expanded the company’s reach and further strengthened its leading portfolio of integrated and secure IT and communications solutions for globally extended enterprises.

“Despite continued economic headwinds, Verizon Business moved decisively during the quarter to expand and deepen its global solutions offerings,” said Kerry Bailey, Verizon chief marketing officer-business. “With signs pointing toward increased economic stability, we’re confident that no provider is better positioned to serve the extended enterprise as technology investment begins to accelerate.”

Focus on Key Solutions Areas

Verizon Business provides integrated global solutions and professional consulting services in four key areas: communications, IT, information security and networking.

New communications solutions capabilities introduced during the quarter included:

A new suite of Managed Mobility Solutions designed to help companies meet the increasing demand for information delivered over mobile devices such as smartphones and cell phones, while avoiding the complexity of managing these devices. The offering helps enterprises manage multiple mobile devices, usage plans and applications across multiple carriers around the globe.
Consulting services to support the deployment and ongoing support of enterprisewide mobility programs. These professional services will better equip organizations to, among other things, control expenses associated with multiple mobile devices and usage plans across several carriers, while maintaining security over the IT environment.
Expanding the company’s unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) portfolio, adding management of applications including presence, contact center and messaging to its Cisco Unified Communications System Release 7.0 portfolio.
Rolling out the company’s award-winning Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks (BEST) feature to Europe, enabling customers there to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IP networks by allowing capacity to be allocated on demand to support business needs across customers’ VoIP locations.
Offering speech services in an IP-enabled version to meet the needs of the growing number of businesses that are converting their networks to an Internet protocol infrastructure. The new capability enables customers to run their speech services on the company’s Hosted IP Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform, as an alternative or in addition to its traditional Hosted IVR platform.
Providing its small- to medium-sized-business (SMB) customers more online tools by enabling them to take advantage of the big-business capabilities inherent in the Verizon Enterprise Center (VEC) customer portal and enabling all customers to interact more efficiently with the company through an expanded set of automated customer-care capabilities.

New IT solutions capabilities included:

Extending availability of Verizon Business’ comprehensive on-demand, “cloud-based” Computing as a Service (CaaS) solution to the company’s Amsterdam data center. The new capability in Europe reinforces the company’s strategy of expanding cloud-computing deployment resources around the globe to meet the stringent security and performance requirements of business customers.
Expanding its Remote IP Application Management service to India, enabling customers headquartered there and local subsidiaries of multinational companies to improve the performance of their online applications while controlling operational expenditure.

New security solutions capabilities included:

Offering the company’s next-generation global managed security services (MSS) platform, complete with new options for service, to better help large and mid-sized businesses protect their vital assets from cyber threats and other online attacks.
Introducing, through its independent ICSA Labs division, new vendor certification and enterprise assessment programs designed to help enterprises safeguard against intrusions through network-connected devices such as printers, faxes and point-of-sale systems.
Expanding its already broad portfolio of business continuity professional services to address gaps commonly found in existing continuity programs. The new consulting services focus on business applications, regulatory compliance, training and awareness, and testing.
Introducing a comprehensive new Application Security Program, which takes a risk-based approach to protecting the critical data contained within applications such as databases and software. The program helps large-business customers better understand and identify the potential security threats to their applications, and take steps to protect them.
Unveiling two new capabilities designed to help safeguard the growing exchange of electronic patient data between hospitals, clinics, physicians, insurers and patients. The first capability is a new Verizon Security Management Program-Healthcare (SMP-H) offering that enables health care organizations to proactively assess the strength of security measures and practices. The second is a suite of IT consulting services that help health care providers design and implement safe security practices for sharing information and storing data.

New networking solutions capabilities included:

Extending the company’s Managed Services portfolio to India, enabling customers headquartered there and local subsidiaries of multinational companies to benefit from the company’s extensive experience and expertise in proactive network monitoring and management. Services now available there include Managed Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), Network Management Reporting – Visual and Wireless LAN services.
Offering SMB customers a cost-effective managed router solution that gives them the secure Verizon Internet access they need coupled with 24 x 7 proactive router monitoring and management. The Verizon Managed Router Solution enables SMB customers – many of which do not have trained IT resources on staff – to take advantage of leading Internet access technology that is backed and supported by Verizon Business networking experts.

Network Leadership and Global Expansion

Verizon Business has invested more than $3 billion since 2006 in its leading global network. Network developments during the quarter included:

Deploying 10 new converged packet access switches in five new sites – Buenos Aires, Argentina; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Makati, Philippines; Calgary, Canada; and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Five additional sites received diverse nodes, which brings the total number of CPA switches to 128 across 111 sites in 30 countries.
Completing preparation for installation of the Europe India Gateway (EIG) submarine cable system equipment at Verizon Business’ terminal station in Marseille, France. This station will support the company’s primary access to the EIG cable system in that region. The EIG is scheduled to be in service in 2010.
Installing 28 Private IP edge routers for a total of 733 edge routers in 209 sites across 59 countries. New cities include San Diego; Cologne, France; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Karachi, Pakistan.
The company expanded its International Mesh Network by additional nodes in Basingstoke and Reading, England. The new equipment connects the Verizon Business network to two Atlantic submarine cables and will provide connectivity to the new Europe India Gateway when completed in 2010. The team also added seven new U.S. domestic network mesh sites.

Verizon Business Industry Recognition

Industry experts continued to recognize the depth and breadth of Verizon Business’ global capabilities during the quarter. This recognition included:

Analyst firm Gartner Inc. positioned Verizon Business in the Leaders Quadrant of its report, “Magic Quadrant for U.S. Telecommunications Service Providers,” which addressed both wireline and wireless voice and data services.
J.D. Power and Associates, which earlier this year gave Verizon Business a leading ranking for customer satisfaction among large-enterprise data service customers, ranked Verizon Business highest in overall customer satisfaction among large-enterprise voice services providers.
The Metro Ethernet Forum awarded Verizon Business its 2009 European Carrier Ethernet Service Provider of the Year Award for Service Innovation. Verizon Business won on the strength of the company’s industry-leading Ethernet portfolio, its robust European geographic coverage and innovative service offers.
PHONE+ magazine named Verizon’s sales partner program a Top 50 Channel Program.
Speech Technology magazine honored Verizon Business with a Star Performers Award for its Open Hosted Speech Services (OHSS), citing Verizon Business’ excellence in innovation and execution.
Cisco recognized Verizon Business’ continued success as a channel partner with a 2008 U.S. Managed UC&C Partner of the Year Award, along with four other top honors for services sold in the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, Cisco named Verizon Business as the 2008 Service Provider Partner of the Year for the Benelux region (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg); gave the company’s French operations Cisco’s Customer Satisfaction Excellence award; and recognized Verizon Business as the first U.S.-based communications solutions provider to attain status as a Data Center Unified Computing Authorized Technology Provider.

New Business Momentum Continues

Despite a challenging global economic environment, Verizon Business continued to expand relationships with existing large-business and government agency customers while adding new business. The company completed agreements during the quarter with multinational corporations, major regional players and government agencies for a wide range of advanced communications and IT solutions.

Specific customer applications included:

Delivering managed WAN services to ING, enabling the global financial institution to focus on its core business. Under the terms of the contract extension, Verizon Business will provide these services to more than 4,000 ING corporate and retail sites in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as more than 200 international locations.
Designing, deploying and managing for Manulife Financial an advanced IP-based global network. Under a five-year agreement, Verizon Business will consolidate and standardize Manulife Financial's discrete regional networks in 15 countries and territories in the U.S., Canada and the Asia-Pacific region to provide Manulife Financial's more than 20,000 employees with access to corporate information and resources required to support the financial protection and wealth management requirements of its millions of customers.
Providing NYSE Euronext with staging, configuration and testing for key components of its U.S. Data Center infrastructure. NYSE Euronext is a leading global operator of financial markets and provider of innovative trading technologies.
Consolidating the communications infrastructure for Sandvik, a global high-tech engineering group with more than 50,000 employees around the world and representation in 130 countries. The company selected Verizon Business as its preferred global communications provider and has seen major business benefits. Under the new contract, Sandvik's global network will be transferred to Verizon Business and fully managed on a 24 x 7 basis, enabling Sandvik to achieve a lower total cost of ownership and concentrate on expanding into new markets.

Verizon also signed new contracts with several U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.