SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired) - Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit - The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced that Verizon Terremark is joining the organization as a Gold member. The company joins existing Linux Foundation Gold members China Mobile, Cisco, Citrix, ETRI, Google, Hitachi, Huawei, NetApp, NYSE Technologies, Panasonic, SUSE and Toyota.

Linux has become a natural choice for businesses intent on pushing cloud computing to its limits in both web-based and enterprise computing environments. It also levels the playing field for vendors who want to innovate with cloud and virtualization technologies to cost-effectively offer customers a variety of new services.

Verizon Terremark's next generation cloud offering, Verizon Cloud, was announced in October and is now in public beta. It includes a IaaS platform, Verizon Cloud Compute, and an object-based storage service, Verizon Cloud Storage, that are built for the enterprise but nimble enough to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, individual IT departments and software developers.

Verizon Terremark joins The Linux Foundation to accelerate its work on open cloud and virtualization technologies and to invest in collaborative development.

"Verizon Terremark's decision to deepen its investment in Linux underscores the strategic importance of the platform in building today's cloud computing infrastructure," said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation. "We look forward to the company's ongoing contributions to Linux, the Xen Project and the larger community."

"Linux, open cloud and open virtualization technologies support innovation in the market, and The Linux Foundation offers a neutral venue where we can help advance this work," said Kevin Clarke, Director of Cloud Platform Engineering at Verizon Terremark. "We have long been committed to providing our clients flexibility, control and performance and open source technologies support that philosophy. This is a great opportunity for us to embrace the shared development process and bring additional value to the community."

In early 2013, Verizon Terremark joined the Xen Project community, contributing immediately to the code base with additions such as support for VMWare workloads. Designed from the start for cloud computing, last year the Xen Project technology became an independently funded Linux Foundation Collaborative Project to benefit from the organization's vast experience leveraging collaborative development to nurture successful software projects.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences, including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

Trademarks: The Linux Foundation, Linux Standard Base, MeeGo, Tizen, and Yocto Project are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.