Verizon has announced that it has agreed to sell its cloud service and hosting service to IBM.
The deal is expected to be completed later this year, though the terms of the cloud and hosting service deal have not been made public.
Additionally, both Verizon and IBM have agreed to work on “strategic initiatives involving networking and cloud services.” These initiatives have also not been disclosed.
George Fischer, SVP and Group President, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said: “This agreement presents a great opportunity for Verizon Enterprise Solutions (VES) and our customers. It is the latest development in an ongoing IT strategy aimed at allowing us to focus on helping our customers securely and reliably connect to their cloud resources and utilize cloud-enabled applications.”
“Our goal is to become one of the world’s leading managed services providers enabled by an ecosystem of best-in-class technology solutions from Verizon and a network of other leading providers.”
The news is the latest indication that Verizon no longer sees itself as part of this side of the tech industry after selling 29 data centres to Equinix in December of last year for $3.6 billion, in a deal which was recently completed.
Verizon closed the public side of its cloud in 2016, though the private offering remained in place.
Fischer, said: “We are notifying affected customers directly although we do not expect any immediate impact to their services as a result of this agreement. We will formally notify and update customers as appropriate with additional information nearer the close of the deal. We expect the transaction to close later this year.”
Verizon are not the first to depart from the cloud business in recent memory, VMware sold vCloud Air to OVH in April 2017, Cisco announced it would be ceasing its cloud operations in March 2017, and HPE shut down Helion in January of 2016.
As of writing IBM has not yet commented on the news.
