Last week, Verizon agreed to sell its cloud and managed hosting service to IBM. Additionally, Verizon agreed to work with IBM on a number of strategic initiatives involving networking and cloud services. This is a unique cooperation between two tech leaders to support global organizations as they look to fully realize the benefits of their cloud computing investments.

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.

Along the way we will invest in technology that helps our customers continue their IT transformation journey. Our customers want to improve application performance while streamlining operations and securing information in the cloud. VES is now well positioned to provide those solutions through intelligent networking, managed IT services and business communications.

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.