Verizon Business eyes professional services growth in the UK

Verizon Business isn't ruling out the possibility of more acquisitions like its purchase of Cybertrust, to bolster its growing professional services business, according to one of the company's senior executives.

The business services arm of the US telephony giant announced the deal back in May this year and says all is going well with the merging of resources and expertise. However, it is exercising caution and plans to wait until it can deem the acquisition a complete success before seriously considering any more strategic buys, according to Nancy Gofus, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Verizon Business.

"I think the area of professional services is one where we need to augment," she told IT PRO. "Verizon's view is probably 'You just bought Cybertrust, let's see you make that work effectively as it's still early days.' My parent wants to see us make that work and we'll go from there, but it is certainly an area where we have growing demand so it's an area we'll continue looking at."

"About 50 per cent of revenue from Cybertrust is in the professional services and it has a significant number of people who have [broad] experience in this area so we're very excited. It's off and running and doing great," she added.

As well as broadening its horizons in the professional services arena, Verizon Business has also mapped-out plans for overall growth, according to Blair Crump, the company's senior vice president of premier and international sales.

"Verizon Business [signalled] a shift in the overall Verizon organisation from regional communications to global communications. The focus [now] is on revenue growth, expansion of our customer base and, as you'll see, expanding investment.

"We no longer have someone who runs France who doesn't talk to the person who runs Singapore and there isn't someone who's just in charge of the US. We have disbanded and restructured [operational command]. This allows us to provide a united front to our customers' needs and initiatives around the world."

This focus on international growth will no doubt help the company move away from its perception of being US-centric and is likely to prove a boost for UK businesses at both a network and professional services level.

"Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is a very large market and one we believe we're doing very well in," said Crump as he detailed how Verizon Business expects some 18 per cent of its European telecoms market share to lie in the UK by 2012. "Our presence in Europe is very robust...and we will continue to expand on that," he added.

Fred Briggs, Verizon Business' executive vice president for operations and technology, backed up Crump's promise of more of an international-friendly company going forward. "We carry more voice traffic than any other carrier in the world. Almost 45 per cent of that traffic is outside the US and we look forward to seeing more of that. [We're thought of as] a US-centric company but we see a lot of growth outside that."

Verizon is currently rolling out its ultra-long haul (ULH) technology in the US and is poised to start deploying it in Europe during later this year. The aim is to have 65 per cent of its US network (equating to around 85 per cent of traffic there) and up to 25 per cent of Europe (equating to 80 per cent of traffic) based on the new technology this year, with the remainder of the network in both countries being moved across over the next 18-24 months, according to Briggs.

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