Verizon's Jeff Deacon gets on a soapbox to promote Verizon as a top choice for cloud computing.

Connected Planet: What differentiates a telecom like Verizon from other cloud providers today?

Jeff Deacon: To start, the end-to-end SLAs on application performance are a key differentiator for telcos that can boast core assets such as hundreds of data centers around the world—necessary as a strong foundation for cloud service infrastructure. Also, owning the global IP networks means telecom operators can help enterprises migrate applications to the cloud with real SLA guarantees. Only a cloud provider that has control of the data center and everything in the data center (as well as the networks underlying those data centers and connecting the enterprises) can offer end-to-end SLA capabilities for mission-critical, heavy-duty applications critical to enterprise businesses.

Additionally, for decades, it is the telcos that do the metering and billing that now enable the usage-based capabilities necessary for measuring, charging and billing for what is actually used in a cloud environment. The back-office systems have to recognize the different types of cloud consumption and move the necessary information into billing and charging systems so customers know exactly what they used and for what they are being charged.

For example, today, we monitor usage on a daily basis when it comes to compute memory and storage, and in a couple of months, we will actually take that down to an hourly level so customers can see what they used on a more granular level.

Verizon closes with points it is a competitor of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Rather than focus on one niche, we want to compete against the platform players like Microsoft and Google, as well as against the unmanaged infrastructure players like Amazon. And, we will layer platform applications on top of what we have so that enterprises have a full range of options, as we have a very diverse base of customers that have different needs at different phases of maturity.