Communications and networks giant Verizon taps VMware’s vCloud compatibility software as their first-level implementation partner as it ramps out to the cloud industry. Verizon Business is looking at a rapid expansion on it cloud capabilities—perhaps many times faster than its pace last 2010.

The same report further explains Verizon’s move to penetrate the cloud market and propel their business: “Verizon’s CaaS cloud is managed following IT Infrastructure Library guidelines and is audited for SAS 70 compliance. Part of Verizon’s approach to cloud users this year will give them not only fast, automated provisioning of servers, but also the ability to conduct secure transactions in an environment managed to established standards. One result is that Verizon moved out of the also-ran category on Dec. 22 into the Gartner “Leaders” so-called magic quadrant. Other leaders include Rackspace, Terremark, Savvis, and AT&T, according to Gartner. Amazon Web Services with EC2 is shown as leading the pack in the “Visionaries” quadrant.”

The enterprise also sees movement beyond infrastructure into platform-based services, and will begin offering customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications online as software as a service (SaaS) later part of this year. This plan will be spearheaded by Patrick Verhoeven, Verizon manager of cloud services. He now sees business workloads become more production-oriented and less dominated by Web site applications or software test and development.

In another note, VMware has been making its way to the tech headlines lately especially with its acquisition of NeoAccel, as reported by Maria Deustcher of SiliconAngle. The company is also set to showcase real world data core studies in tomorrow’s event at New England, which they are hosting.