For two underdogs in a market as competitive as the public cloud, joining forces is one of the only ways to push ahead. That’s how Google Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. reportedly ended up in talks to develop a joint infrastructure-as-a-service offering aimed at loosening Amazon Inc.’s grip on the enterprise.

Insiders close to the negotiations told CRN that one of the options the companies are weighing is to create a Verizon-branded hybrid cloud platform capable of augmenting in-house hardware with resources from Google’s data centers. That the carrier is apparently taking the front seat in the marketing effort suggests the duo is mainly targeting organizations that already rely on its network for connectivity, presumably with the hope they’ll be more receptive of the value proposition. After all, upselling to an existing customer is often easier than acquiring a new one.

But where Verizon can contribute the most to the partnership is on the operational front. One of the biggest challenges holding back cloud adoption is the cost of transmitting large amounts of data over the web. Companies that can’t buy a dedicated uplink to their provider have to spend upwards of weeks synchronizing records, which is unacceptable in hybrid environments where workloads move between on- and off-premise infrastructure on a regular basis. It’s such a hassle that Amazon recently introduced the ability to physically ship records to its facilities.

Customers that take advantage of the option have a special appliance shipped to their premises that they can load with information and send back to to the infrastructure-as-a-service giant via UPS. The approach is more cost-efficient than using dedicated uplinks for one-time migrations but still has plenty of limitations, which Verizon and Google are in a position to exploit. The duo could offer heavily-discounted data rates for companies that choose their offering over Amazon’s cloud.

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