Verizon Business recently ushered in new leadership but remains focused on penetrating the enterprise space on the backs of SD-WAN, security, and unified communication services.

Sowmyanarayan Sampath, recently installed EVP and CEO of Verizon Business, noted the continued focus during the recent Oppenheimer Technology, Internet, and Communications Conference. He explained that those three services when tied to the carrier’s fixed-wireless access (FWA) services “gives us a bump in ARPU [average revenue per user], but more importantly, also make it very sticky and lowers churn.”

“A lot of our fixed-wireless connections sit behind an SD-WAN controller,” Sampath noted as an example. “So as more and more companies, retailers move to a broadband-based connection, they use fixed wireless access as a method of access and run SD-WAN on it. So that's a big thing we sell. We manage it, both sell the product, but also on a managed service basis, we do that.”

Verizon Business earlier this year added VMware’s VeloCloud SD-WAN platform to its managed services portfolio, with the carrier citing increased demand from WAN edge use cases. The VeloCloud add joined managed SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) offerings from Versa, Fortinet, Cisco, Aruba, and Zscaler.

Sampath, who had previously served as chief revenue officer and replaced long-time Verizon Business leader Tami Erwin effective July 1, added that Verizon Business’ next goal is to get more enterprises to sign up for its managed packages.

“Now what we have to do is continue driving more attach rate,” Sampath said. “Some of our smaller business customers end up just using plain connectivity with a very small security overlay. So I think the work in front of us is to keep increasing our attach rates for more products, which will drive ARPU accretion.”

Verizon Business also remains bullish on its mobile edge computing (MEC) efforts. Sampath noted that the carrier has deals with all three large hyperscalers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – to provide optionality to enterprises.

“I would say we are past the technical proof of concept stage to some pretty early deployments right now,” Sampath said. “But that's a pretty growth product for us in the next couple of years.”

That growth is through two deployment models: private MEC and public MEC.

The private MEC path involves an on-premises device deployment that allows an enterprise to maintain total control over its data. The carrier runs this on top of its agreement with AWS, Microsoft, and GCP.

“We'll work with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft on that piece,” Sampath said. “So it will be their box, but then we'll integrate our private network or our 5G network deep with that. So in a single control plane … you can control network, you can control throughput, you can control the cloud functions or in a single control plane. And you get the best of both worlds in one place. You don't have to do any integration.”

The public MEC work taps into nearly 20 locations “where the clouds have collocated with us.” This model is one Verizon executives have previously stated provide a connection point to within 150 miles of most enterprises.

“We are the world leader in mobile edge compute and private 5G networks,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said during the carrier’s most recent earnings call. “We feel that’s the sweet spot for us. We’ve been all the time in very early with other 5G use cases as well and feel really good where we are.”

Security is also an ongoing challenge for Verizon Business' enterprise customers. Sampath explained that enterprises are all over the place in terms of their digital transformation journey, both in their greater use of cloud platforms and in managing their connectivity routes. However, securing those connections remains a top focus.

“Earlier, all connections were PIP, or private IP connections, highly secure, highly managed,” Sampath said. “Now your work-from-home customers, they're sitting in their home, in their kitchen table through their broadband and accessing company assets around the world. There's a very different type of access architecture that has come. Because of that, security has changed a lot.”

He noted that the use of zero-trust architectures is helping enterprises manage that change.

“The rise of zero-trust architecture is pretty big, and every connection that comes back has to be verified and checked,” Sampath said. “So changes in type of architecture as well as changes in security are probably the two bigger things in infrastructure that people are dealing with.”