As the industry consolidates around a few cloud solutions, competitors to these companies need to make sure they are compatible with their rivals in core competency areas. As a result, Verizon just announced a deal with Amazon Web Services Inc. to offer virtual networking services within the AWS environment for delivering connectivity to Amazon customers. Anuj Dutia, senior manager of product and new business at Verizon Communications Inc., shared his insights into the freshly inked deal.

“We are trying to make sure we instantiate the virtual appliances in AWS so that we are able to give our customers end-to-end connectivity. We have a service offering across the platforms; we have our own private cloud; we have AWS … our customers want to have a hybrid environment,” said Dutia. “They want to make sure they can connect with each of these business applications with the best user experience, so that’s what we’re enabling with this service.” 

Dutia spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s AWS Summit in New York City. He shared his insights into the freshly inked deal between AWS and Verizon. (* Disclosure below.)

Cloud-agnostic connectivity

Even though Verizon has its own OpenStack-based cloud offerings, its true value lies in connectivity solutions. And the company’s networking team wants to ensure they continue to add value to non-Verizon cloud stacks, according to Dutia

“We are not in the business of telling them where their applications should reside. … It should not matter if it is hosted in my data center, yours, AWS or on the edge,” Dutia stated. “We will enable you; you just tell us what kind of connectivity you need and where do you want to host it. … Now we have an automated orchestrated way with a click of a button to instantiate something on AWS for you that you can connect all the way to your business applications seamlessly.”

Being a cellular provider, Verizon has an inherent advantage providing connectivity on the Internet of Things edge where hard Ethernet lines are non-existent.

“There is a thick edge and a thin edge. When you say a thick edge you want the whole application with routing, firewall and security sitting at the edge. If I’m a bank, I may need that. But if I’m a retailer I may not,” Dutia stated. “We will enable those edge devices to be thin or thick versions to each of these cloud locations so that it’s a seamless connectivity experience. Our strength is in the virtualization and network connectivity, but all focused on the network.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is an unpaid media partner for AWS Summit. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE