Business Resilience Solutions addresses a range of business-continuity preparedness tasks.
Verizon Business last week unveiled services designed to let business and government customers maintain their telecommunications in times of natural disasters, equipment failures or building evacuations.
The new group of services, called Business Resilience Solutions, addresses a range of business-continuity preparedness tasks, from assessment to implementation of network and storage capabilities. The Business Resilience Solutions portfolio is designed to address requirements for continuity, security and productivity, and the services range from traditional voice and data networking to high-availability and network-embedded applications, storage offerings, and professional services capabilities.
“A new era of business-critical systems [such as grid and utility computing] will accelerate the [business resiliency] market,” says Sean Hackett, research manager of Business Network Services for IDC.
Businesses are transitioning from reactive disaster recovery to active business continuity, Hackett says. This view is shared by Verizon Business customer DBK Concepts, a provider of mobile data-collection systems for inventory management in the retail, grocery, wholesale and transportation industries in Miami.
“In the last two years of our business, we did have significant interruptions due to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Wilma,” says Luis Barroso, president of DBK Concepts. “We became very proactive in looking for a solution at that time. If we miss our shipping window because of Internet disruption by one hour, our customer is down an additional 48 hours.”
DBK now uses Verizon Business data centers and satellite communications for business continuity, Barroso says.
Other components of the portfolio include a partnership with Strohl Systems, a provider of business-continuity planning software and services. Verizon Business will provide customers with consulting services, such as business-impact analyses, gap analyses, strategy workshops, asset inventory development and vulnerability assessments, while Strohl’s business- continuity planners will work with customers to develop contingency plans to keep business operations functioning and employees, customers and suppliers connected, Verizon Business says.
Another service is the Resilient Network Attached Storage (RNAS) solution. It targets large organizations with branch offices or other remote locations, and is designed to improve the performance of storage applications and WAN infrastructure. RNAS combines network transport and access from Verizon Business, network-attached storage platforms and software from EMC, and network equipment from Cisco.
RNAS provides remote offices with dedicated, on-site file-storage and -sharing capabilities, while centralizing file management, security and business-recovery functions. RNAS helps ensure files are accessible anytime by staff working outside the main office, Verizon Business says.
RNAS and Strohl Systems join existing Verizon Business services, such as managed security and storage offerings unveiled last year, to fill out the business resiliency portfolio. Verizon Business plans to introduce additional business-continuity services targeted at collaboration, mobility and supply-chain management throughout the year.
The carrier will face competition in this market from systems integrators, specialized service providers and traditional carriers such as AT&T, which demonstrated its mobile disaster-recovery capabilities at TelecomNext earlier this year.
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