Verizon is planning to roll out a public beta of its Verizon Cloud “Infrastructure as a Service” platform and cloud-based object storage in the fourth quarter of this year. Verizon Cloud, which includes two primary components — Verizon Cloud Compute (the IaaS platform) and Verizon Cloud Storage (an object-based service) — will target enterprises, mid-size companies and development shops. The launch will initially involve a few hundred new users per month.

“We took feedback from our enterprise clients across the globe and built a new cloud platform from the bottom up to deliver the attributes they require,” explained John Stratton, president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

“Verizon Cloud Compute can be used for creating virtual machines and ‘deploying them in just seconds,’ Verizon said. Users can define virtual machine and network performance as well as configure storage attached to multiple virtual machines, rather than jut use pre-sets. They build and pay for what they use,” reports TV Technology.

“Weather is the most dynamic dataset in the world, and we also use big data to help consumers better plan their day and help businesses make intelligent decisions as it relates to weather,” said Bryson Koehler, chief information officer at The Weather Co. “As a big data leader, a major part of The Weather Co.’s go-forward strategy is based on the cloud, and we are linking a large part of our technical future to these services from Verizon.”

Verizon Cloud Storage is an “object-addressable, multitenant storage platform providing safe, durable, reliable and cost-effective storage accessible from anywhere on the Web” that “overcomes latency issues that have plagued many traditional storage offerings, providing improved performance,” according to Verizon.

The company currently has cloud data centers in Virginia, Colorado, Florida, California, Amsterdam, London and Sao Paolo. While services will initially be limited to a specific number of users each month, the Verizon Cloud Insider program will provide awaiting customers with information regarding feature availability and ongoing improvements.

Interested parties can sign up to request a beta invite at the Verizon Cloud site.