Verizon’s acquisition of Terremark, announced last night, clearly indicates that the company is committed to becoming a major player in the rapidly evolving and expanding Cloud Computing marketplace. It will also trigger a new round of similar acquisitions in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) segment of the Cloud Computing arena.

Verizon’s decision to acquire Terremark was a “classic make/buy” choice, according to the company’s executives during their telebriefing this morning. The acquisition accelerates Verizon’s move to the Cloud by leveraging Terremark’s proven capabilities. Terremark offers enterprise-class IaaS solutions which fit well into Verizon’s portfolio and target market. Terremark also has excess hosting capacity in its Miami and Culpepper facilities, and now has the additional financial resources and channels to market to fuel more rapid growth.

Verizon will allow Terremark to retain its brand and independent operations. In fact, Verizon executives suggested that they may move many of its own data centers under to the Terremark team over time to accelerate their conversion into more efficient Cloud environments.

You can bet that boardrooms throughout the telco and other segments of the tech industry are abuzz this morning with more urgent discussions about how they should cement their positions in the Cloud Computing marketplace to respond to Verizon’s move. And, I’m sure the phones at Rackspace, Opsource, Savvis, Joyent and other prominent IaaS players are also ringing with calls from M&A folks representing AT&T, IBM, HP, Dell, etc. seeking to keep pace with the intensifying activity in the IaaS market.

cloud computing Terremark Verizon