Verizon Business Rolls Out Integrated Solutions, Enhances Network During First-Quarter 2009

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. -  During the first quarter 2009, Verizon Business rolled out new integrated communications, security and IT solutions that enable globally extended enterprises to better collaborate with customers, employees, suppliers and other key stakeholders.

Sales of strategic services, which include a full spectrum of professional and managed IP services, generated $1.5 billion in revenue in the quarter, up 7.5 percent from the first quarter 2008.   The company also continued to enhance and expand its leading global network, which provides the vital platform for its integrated solutions. For a retrospective and prospective view of Verizon Business IP innovation, visit: http://www.verizonbusiness.com/about/ipinnovation.

"Multinational corporations and government agencies face the complexity of providing secure access to their extended networks and making the most of the applications operating on their infrastructure," said Fran Shammo, president of Verizon Business.  "In these challenging times, Verizon Business again demonstrated its commitment to helping today's globally extended enterprises work better and smarter."

New Converged Security Solutions, Collaboration Capabilities

Verizon Business introduced new communications, IT, information security and network capabilities during the quarter, continuing its leadership in delivering the most comprehensive set of capabilities for global, secure communication services for businesses and government agencies worldwide.

 These capabilities included:

• A new portfolio of converged solutions that address the security and performance challenges faced by large corporations.  The new solutions - built on the company's world-class professional, managed and security capabilities - meet the increased demand for integrated capabilities spanning the entire IT "stack."   Offerings available in first quarter include Virtual Discovery and Classification service, Vulnerability Management Service for Data Center Colocation customers and Secure Virtualization Design service.

• Extension of its suite of in-the-cloud Denial of Service (DOS) Defense solutions, which includes both Detection and Mitigation offerings, to Canada; and expansion of its proactive Detection Service to 14 European and eight Asia-Pacific countries.
• A new Risk-Correlation Service, a fully automated, managed-security solution that calculates risk and displays the results via an online scorecard. The service prioritizes current and emerging threats - allowing enterprises to more effectively and efficiently remediate high-risk vulnerabilities, better plan security strategy and allot security-related spending.
• A managed service that enables corporate users around the globe to control their unified communications experience with a simple click of the mouse.  Based on the recently released Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 platform, the service delivers unified communications functions to the desktop, enabling workers to enhance communications through real-time instant messaging, "presence," Web conferencing and VoIP.
• Capabilities enabling large businesses and government agencies to immediately initiate conference calls from some of the most popular enterprise instant messaging (IM) applications.   This integration of audio and Web conferencing across multiple leading IM services - including IBM Lotus Sametime Unified Communications and Collaboration, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and the Cisco Jabber XCP - helps customers speed decision-making and enhance productivity.
• Enhancements to  Verizon Business' IP Trunking offering that now enables European-based companies to implement a centralized IP PBX hub in one European location and to extend VoIP services - including the enhanced features and benefits of unified communications and collaboration - to other sites across multiple European countries.
• An expanded suite of consulting and management services that covers every aspect of virtualization, a fast-growing approach to optimizing computing resources.  Verizon Business' Virtualization Consulting and Management Services enable customers to out-task the design and the often complex day-to-day management, maintenance and security of virtualized environments.
• A new single-source model for Verizon Business customers to procure equipment and other support services in 122 countries and territories.  In addition to bolstering and simplifying the services that Verizon Business provides to support customer premises equipment, the new model includes an array of global agreements with seven leading equipment manufacturers, distributors and resellers.

Network Leadership and Global Expansion

Verizon Business continued during the quarter to enhance its leading global IP network, improving its capabilities in key global markets and increasing its resiliency and reliability.  The company has invested more than $3 billion since 2006.

Network developments announced during the quarter include:

• Receiving approval from the government of India's Department of Telecommunications to operate the company's two international gateways in Mumbai and Chennai, under its international long-distance license. The approval allows Verizon Business to offer its suite of private line services to multinational customers and to activate the company's submarine cable capacity to India, providing direct connections to Verizon's global network, one of the largest such networks in the world.

• Cooperation between Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) and Verizon Business to jointly develop a new Internet protocol (IP) node to support the delivery of advanced data services to Malaysian-headquartered companies, as well as multinational companies with operations in Malaysia and throughout the region.  The two companies are collaborating to develop a new Internet node in Cyberjaya, which will be jointly operated by TM and Verizon Business. The node is due to go live during the current quarter.
• Deployment of a technologically advanced network configuration in Singapore, one of the largest financial centers in Southeast Asia, giving large-business and government customers enhanced reliability for customer voice-and-data traffic and more diverse routes to move mission-critical traffic. The network architecture, called meshing, provides additional network paths for rerouting traffic in the event of a cable cut or other network disruption. This Singapore expansion complements the Pacific mesh network deployment the company began in 2007.

Verizon Business Industry Recognition

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

• Gartner positioned Verizon Business in the Leaders quadrant in three separate reports:  "Magic Quadrant for Help Desk Outsourcing Services, North America,"¹  "Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers,"² and "Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service Providers, 2008."³ 

• Frost & Sullivan gave Verizon Business its North American Market Leadership Award for the company's Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services, for the second time in three years, as well as its 2008 Australia Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership Award for Managed Security Services, one of the industry analyst firm's annual Best Practice Awards.
• Technology Marketing Corp.'s (TMC) Unified Communications magazine awarded Verizon Business a 2008 Product of the Year Award for the company's Managed Unified Communications & Collaboration Service.

During the quarter, Verizon Business also demonstrated excellence in service delivery. For the fourth consecutive year, the company successfully completed its SAS 70 Type II examination for its application management operations center in San Francisco and London, where it remotely manages its customers' critical and often geographically dispersed infrastructure and applications. In addition, Verizon Business completed the SAS 70 Type II examination for its managed hosting centers (Smart Centers) in Germany, Japan, the U.S. and the U.K. as well as 15 of its Internet colocation facilities (Premium Data Centers) in North America and Europe.  Enterprise customers can take advantage of the company's managed or Smart Centers to outsource the day-to-day management of their Web sites and IP-enabled business applications.

Enterprises, Government Agencies Look to Verizon Business

Verizon Business continued to both solidify and expand its relationships with existing large businesses and government agencies around the world 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 include:

• Verizon Business signed new contracts with several U.S. government agencies, including a prime contract under the U.S. General Service Administration's Alliant program and the Defense Information Systems Network Transmission Services - Pacific II (DTS-P II) contract awarded by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The company also continued to generate sales under GSA's Networx program.

• The Agfa-Gevaert Group extended its existing global communications agreement with Verizon Business.  The Verizon Private IP network connects 80 sites around the world, increasing the exchange of business-critical information and employee collaboration. The Agfa-Gevaert Group is headquartered in Mortsel, Belgium, and has presence in 40 countries around the world, with agents in an additional 100 markets. The company is one of the world's leaders in imaging and information technology. Agfa develops, manufactures and markets analogue and digital systems for the printing industry (Agfa Graphics), for the health care sector (Agfa Healthcare), and for specific industrial applications (Agfa Materials).
• CIGNA Life Insurance Company of Europe S.A. - a part of the CIGNA Corp., one of the leading health insurance and financial service organizations - turned to Verizon Business for the company's communication needs.  A fully managed Verizon Private IP network will link company sites across Germany, Italy, Spain and Hong Kong, supplying a secure and robust framework for pan-regional communications as well as high-performance dedicated internet access.
• HDR Inc., an employee-owned architectural, engineering and consulting firm with headquarters in Omaha, Neb., signed a four-year, multimillion dollar agreement with Verizon Business to support HDR's global networking and communications requirements.  A managed Private IP network connects nearly 200 sites around the globe and delivers the reliability and bandwidth necessary to support collaboration and the transfer of large data files.  Verizon IP Trunking with Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks offers a cost-effective voice-over Internet-protocol platform that enables on-demand sharing of underutilized trunk capacity.

About the Magic Quadrant
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with the world's most connected IP network to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees - enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Many of the world's largest businesses and governments - including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions - rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

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¹ Gartner Research: "Magic Quadrant for North American Help Desk Outsourcing, North America." Richard T. Matlus and William Maurer, March 4, 2009.

² Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for Global Network Service Providers," January 23, 2009, authors - Neil Rickard and Robert Mason. RAS Core Research Note G00162917.

³ Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service Providers, 2008", December 9, 2008, authors - Neil Rickard and Katja Ruud. Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00163121.