Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, is banking heavily on the adoption of cloud computing model for its future business growth.

Verizon already has many small companies as its cloud service customers, especially in India and other parts of Asia. However, the company is also eyeing large enterprises and multi-nationals, which it believes hold better prospects for future adoption of the cloud model.

“Cloud is no longer a buzzword for us and we believe that the market is moving towards everything as a service. We are making significant investments in our cloud offerings,” said Joe Crawford, Executive Director, IT Solutions, Verizon Business.

A step in this direction was visible when Verizon Business strengthened its extensive Asia-Pacific network infrastructure by opening a second data centre in Hong Kong. The new facility will enhance Verizon’s ability to deliver new cloud and data centre services in the region -- and provide direct access to Verizon’s global network -- to meet the growing demand of the company’s enterprise customers.

The investment is a part of the $16.8 billion to $17.2 billion that Verizon Communications plans to spend this year building, operating and integrating its advanced, reliable and high-performance networking and computing platforms.

“We continue to serve our presence globally to better serve our multinational customers and to accelerate the delivery of next-generation cloud services,” said Yali Liu, Director of Asia-Pacific Network Planning, Verizon Business.

She added that the company will bring in new technologies to make cloud more cost effective, reliable and secure. Verizon also provides customers the flexibility to choose the geography/location where they would like to host their cloud services.

To address the issue of security and authentication, Verizon partnered with Novell in April this year. The solution called as Secure Access Services is an on-demand identity and access management service that aimed at enterprise clients to outsource their infrastructure and expertise required to extend and manage user access to cloud-based resources while maintaining control over policies and governance.

Verizon has also tied up with IBM and McAfee among others to offer more potential services in computing and security.