Verizon Business has recently launched its new Storage-as-a-Service offering. Called the Verizon Cloud Storage, the pay-as-you-go service can be used to either augment traditional storage options, such as storage area networking and network-attached storage, or be used as a stand-alone solution.

Verizon claims strong security mechanisms around the cloud based storage offering. Key features include strong physical and logical security such as secure multi-tenant file system and encrypted data transfers.  The new service supports multiple methods for accessing stored data, including software, application programming interfaces and third-party applications, and will offer enterprises the option to select where data is stored.

The company is offering a suite of IT consulting services that will help enterprises fully understand where their data is currently stored and how it is used and accessed, helping to align storage policies and practices with business objectives.

One of the consulting services in the new suite – Data Discovery and Retention Policy Assessment – will provide discovery of the customer’s data and an assessment of existing policies for the flow, storage and handling of data.  Another service, Data Retention Policy Development, will help enterprises develop a formal data storage and backup policy as well as a roadmap for implementation of the recommendations.

Verizon Business will initially leverage the Storage Delivery Network from Nirvanix, a premier enterprise cloud storage service provider.  Later this year, the company is targeting deployment of additional Nirvanix managed storage nodes in its U.S. and European data centers, with additional nodes planned for deployment in the Asia-Pacific region in 2011.