Verizon Business Meets Demand for High-Tech Services Through Expanded Professional Service Capabilities

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- To meet the growing demand from large corporations for high-tech services geared to improving business performance, Verizon Business is significantly increasing the number and range of its professional consulting services.

The company, which provides advanced communications and IT solutions for 98 percent of the Fortune 500, announced Tuesday (May 20) that it is delivering a standardized set of more than 50 professional-service capabilities in 30 countries around the globe. The services will be delivered through 2,700 specially trained and experienced consultants in five key practice areas: Security Services, IT Services, Network Integration and Engineering, IP Communications and Contact Center Services.

Global managed and professional services - a key part of Verizon Business' strategic services offerings -- represent a significant growth area for the company. It expects to experience continued expansion in this area throughout 2008. Verizon Business' strategic services -- which also include fast-growing IP, Ethernet and optical-ring services - drove revenue of $1.4 billion in the first quarter 2008, up 23.5 percent from the first quarter 2007.

[NOTE: An audio podcast discussing how Verizon Business is expanding its professional services capabilities to better serve customers is available at http://www.podtech.net/home/5157/verizon-business-expands-consulting- services.]

"Business strategy, communications and IT require a holistic approach in today's complex, always-on global marketplace," said John Killian, president of Verizon Business. "Through our new standardized pro-services capabilities, we are recognizing this fundamental shift in business. We are broadening our delivery of these offerings, enabling companies to think differently and improve their business performance in ways they may not have imagined."

Rising Demand for Technology Expertise

Industry experts are finding that companies need an end-to-end partner to help them address complex business issues such as global expansion, data center relocation, outdated infrastructure, and growing security threats. Driving this trend is the strategic importance of IT in helping companies meet their business goals.

"Verizon Business is addressing a critical need in the marketplace," said Wu Zhou, senior analyst of IDC's network professional services research. "Multinationals need support not only in managing their networks but in understanding how to best use IT to drive their business forward, whether it's data center consolidation to maximize operational efficiency or converging voice, video and data onto a single network. With its heritage of innovation and world-class service delivery, Verizon Business is poised to be an ideal partner."

Verizon Business' Go-to-Market Strategy

Through its defined and expanded set of capabilities, the company is providing end-to-end support from the network to the application layer and anywhere in between. A Verizon Business resource deployment manager heads each consulting services team, working closely with the customer's account manager and marshalling resources across Verizon Business to bring together the right group of experts to address and advise the customer.

The delivery model is flexible, enabling customers to choose from full lifecycle services -- from start to finish -- on a project-basis or long-term outsourcing arrangement.

Companies can also choose to transfer their assets, including people and equipment, to Verizon Business to oversee and manage all of their IT needs.

Services are offered stand-alone or as part of a multifaceted enterprise initiative.

Delivering Solutions Through Key Practice Areas

Verizon Business excels in delivering solutions across key practice areas that address a wide range of business issues, including creating the right technology surrounding for today's extended enterprise, which consists of employees, customers, partners and suppliers. The professional services team provides recommendations for accelerating the transition to new technologies, applications and delivery methods; provides supplemental staff to expand in-house resource and capabilities; and addresses growing security compliance requirements.

For example, enterprise customers such as Rent-A-Center turn to Verizon Business to advise them on how to modernize their networks so they can take their business to the next level. Rent-A-Center, the largest rent-to-own operator in the U.S., required assistance in advancing its network to gain more functionality and connect 3,200 retail locations in North America. Ensuring the company's individual store units could support the transition to IP, Verizon Business conducted an assessment of each of Rent-A-Center's store locations across the U.S. and Canada and also managed the deployment of an advanced IP network for Rent-A-Center. This phase was followed by an application (software) assessment to ensure the company's corporatewide financial application could support in-store transactions that were consistent in performance across the company, so the retailer could better serve its customers.

Verizon Business leverages its core capabilities to support enterprise customers across five key practice areas:

-- IT Services - Verizon Business helps companies handle a wide range of IT responsibilities from consolidation of data centers to disaster recovery backup and restore. Spread across a dozen pro-services capabilities, Verizon Business specializes in e-commerce assessment and design, Web application acceleration, database design and replication, disaster recovery/backup and restore, data center relocation/migration, and IT staff augmentation. -- Network Integration and Engineering - Verizon Business enables the building, management and maintenance of wired and wireless local-to- wide area networks providing the foundation for today's business. With more than 10 pro services capabilities, Verizon Business can deliver an array of essential networking services, including: network operations center design, new technology evaluation, network integration -- hardware and software, lifecycle program management office and project management expertise, as well as network engineering staff augmentation. -- Professional Security Services - As a global managed security services leader, Verizon Business offers a comprehensive set of pro service capabilities worldwide for securing the extended enterprise through its threat and vulnerability assessment, identity and access management, governance, risk and compliance, and business impact analysis offerings. Verizon Business focuses on forensics, PCI compliance, identity access management, and threat and vulnerability assessment and mitigation. -- IP Communications - Verizon Business offers a range of specialized services to address the complexity when moving from the traditional legacy voice (PSTN) world to voice over IP. Verizon Business offers more than 10 pro-serve capabilities so that companies can get where they need to go through convergence strategy workshop and planning services; business/financial impact analysis; ITP/convergence readiness assessment; convergence architecture and design; and migration strategy development. -- Contact Center Solutions - The Contact Center practice area specializes in system integration, hardware/software implementation and custom software development. Offerings include contact center architecture, design and implementation; contact center transformational analysis; infrastructure consulting; speech recognition; Web development; project management; and call center operations consulting, including work force management and quality monitoring, as well as custom reporting.

Verizon Business professional services staff hold many distinctions including hundreds of technical certifications across a broad range of technologies and vendors, as well as strong proficiencies in assessment, engineering, integration and network optimization capabilities to deliver end-to-end solutions. The company's acquisitions of Digex, Totality, NetSec and Cybertrust over the past five years have helped to deepen its pro-serve capabilities available today.

Verizon Business employs best practices and leverages a network of partners to enable delivery of its world-class solutions. Best-of-breed partners include Microsoft, M3, Cisco, Nortel, Juniper, Strohl and Geotechs.

The company provides a complementary set of managed network, managed hosting and managed security offerings, managing and maintaining more than 4,000 customer networks and more than 260,000 communications devices around the globe. Its global infrastructure, including one of the most expansive and the most connected* global IP networks in the world, provide a unique foundation from which to serve multinational customers.

Killian concluded: "For Verizon Business, standardizing our approach to professional services is the next logical step beyond managed services. We've been extremely successful in helping our customers transition to IP and make the most of its advantages. Verizon Business is uniquely positioned to help our customers navigate the convergence of communications and IT. We have the people, processes and technology to help our customers take their business to the next level."

For more information, visit http://www.verizonbusiness.com/solutions/professional.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications , is a global IP leader and network-based partner for delivering integrated communications and information technology (IT) solutions to large-business and government customers worldwide. Combining unsurpassed reach with managed services, security, mobility, collaboration and professional services capabilities, Verizon Business delivers global solutions that power innovation and enable its customers to do business better. For more information, visit http://www.verizonbusiness.com/.

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*Based on number of autonomous system network connections, 2007 TeleGeography Global Internet Geography Database and Report.

NOTE: This news release contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. For those statements, we claim the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The following important factors could affect future results and could cause those results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements: materially adverse changes in economic and industry conditions and labor matters, including workforce levels and labor negotiations, and any resulting financial and/or operational impact, in the markets served by us or by companies in which we have substantial investments; material changes in available technology, including disruption of our suppliers' provisioning of critical products or services; the impact of natural or man-made disasters or litigation and any resulting financial impact not covered by insurance; technology substitution; an adverse change in the ratings afforded our debt securities by nationally accredited ratings organizations; the final results of federal and state regulatory proceedings concerning our provision of retail and wholesale services and judicial review of those results; the effects of competition in our markets; the timing, scope and financial impacts of our deployment of fiber-to-the-premises broadband technology; the ability of Verizon Wireless to continue to obtain sufficient spectrum resources; changes in our accounting assumptions that regulatory agencies, including the SEC, may require or that result from changes in the accounting rules or their application, which could result in an impact on earnings; and the ability to complete acquisitions and dispositions.