Verizon Targets Healthcare and Government

Verizon (News - Alert) is putting its eggs in the government and healthcare baskets, focusing its aim on those two areas. The two areas are showing a lot of growth, making them both verticals worth focusing on and battlegrounds for competing companies.

Healthcare-wise, Verizon has recently released the HIPAA-complaint healthcare cloud. With this, it hopes to see a growth in healthcare-driven revenue, although cloud vendors such as AT&T (News - Alert) and Dell are also targeting it. Google has already tried and failed with Google Health, proving the (perhaps ironically) cutthroat competition in healthcare services.

As for government, Verizon is aiming for data-sensitive agencies that are in need of secure private clouds. While it is facing competition from AWS GovCloud, it has the edge in security and services.

Verizon’s cloud business may be a small piece of its entirety, its growth in the recent quarter is predicted to be around 25 percent, and is expected to keep growing. While it faces competition from Amazon Web Services, AT&T, IBM (News - Alert), and more, it is likely that it will maintain a strong presence by targeting data-sensitive companies that need the security it can offer.

At the same time, Verizon is expanding its cloud business to Latin America, reaching out to more businesses and organizations. With this, it hopes to get an edge up on its competitors in that region, basically planting a flag and saying “We were here first, we get first dibs on customers.” How well that will work will be seen in time, as other cloud providers begin to expand.

While the competition may be tough, Verizon is buckling down and focusing on those key markets in healthcare and government. It has the variety of services and quality of security to make it a real contender, but its competitors have a few things going for them as well. The strategy is sound, now we’ll see where it goes.