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Cisco and Verizon continue to collaborate on services for enterprise customers, and now Cisco will be making its Virtual Managed Services (VMS) available to Verizon in a move that the companies said June 6 will “speed business processes” and help enterprises “work more efficiently.”

Enterprises will now have access to a library of Cisco-based Virtual Network Functions (VNF) from Verizon using VMS, which provides Verizon with a platform for “rapid provisioning, zero touch automation and centralized policy management” for Cisco’s Intelligent Wide-Area Network (WAN) service offering, the companies said in a news release. Verizon is the first global network service provider to deploy the Intelligent WAN service.

With the VMS platform, Verizon and Cisco will be able to provide “seamless delivery of Cisco virtualized platform and solutions in the future,” and that will enable “faster time to market for combined offerings,” the companies said.

Enterprises will also benefit from: increased scalability and agility by enabling new services to be provisioned more quickly; control of operational expenditures via automation of service provisioning and a self-service user interface; and enhanced user experience and improved business outcomes, the companies said.

“We are helping our enterprise customers have more insight and control over their IT and networking infrastructure through virtualization,” Shawn Hakl, VP of networking and innovation at Verizon, said in the news release. He added: “Cisco is an important technology provider helping us to plan and deliver secure, high-performance virtualized services with agility to our clients.”

“Verizon is taking another leap forward to simplifying network operations through virtualization,” Yvette Kanouff, SVP and GM for the service provider business at Cisco, said. She added: “With innovative technologies such as those offered through our VMS solution, Verizon and Cisco are focused on helping their customers achieve high-quality experiences.”

VMS is a turn-key software-defined services platform for the rapid delivery of SD-WAN, security and automation services. Cisco’s VMS uses Cisco devices, software and network topologies, including its Digital Network Architecture for enterprises, allowing service providers to scale to the growing needs of their customers and quickly integrate it within their own infrastructure and with their enterprise customers.

VMS is built upon a cloud native, container-based architecture that it said is “designed to transform service provider networks of the future.” The solution provides “greater automation, virtualization, and simplicity to networking and will help enable operators worldwide to transform and secure their networks, while offering new services quickly,” it said.

Before this latest announcement, Cisco said in February that Verizon was building one of the largest 5G proving grounds in the world with collaboration from Cisco. As a member of the Verizon 5G Technology Forum, Cisco said in a news release, it was helping Verizon “drive 5G innovation around the network and provide services needed to help enable their joint enterprise and SMB customers to receive the best connectivity experience that 5G can offer.”

Cisco said last year that it was teaming with Verizon Enterprise Solutions to deliver Cisco Spark, a new cloud-based collaboration service, to Verizon customers.