VMware (NYSE: VMW) announced its vSphere 5.0 has achieved Common Criteria certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4+) under the Common Criteria Evaluation and Certification Scheme (CCS).

Common Criteria is an international set of guidelines (ISO 15408) providing a common framework for evaluating security features and capabilities of IT security products, and EAL4+ is the highest level recognized by the members of the Common Criteria Recognition Agreement (CCRA).

“Cloud computing is a top priority for CIOs of government IT organizations,” said Aileen Black, vice president of Public Sector at VMware, in a prepared statement. “With VMware vSphere 5.0, government organizations can trust that they have a solid and reliable platform to achieve the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining the security, control and efficiency they require.”

During the evaluation process for EAL4+ certification, VMware vSphere 5.0 was tested and certified with the help of Corsec Security and CGI’s accredited Common Criteria lab.

Also on the VMware news ticker, SOA Software, a provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance solutions, announced that its products can now be deployed as VMware images, enabling customers to deploy and migrate governance solutions within and across their enterprise. SOA Software has also become a partner in VMware’s Technology Alliance Program, which certifies the successful deployment of all of its products on VMware vSphere virtual machines.

In April VMware threw a party to mark the one-year anniversary of its Cloud Foundry open PaaS, with some new partners and a new open source management system, as well as new tools for operating large-scale services.

Readers can click here for an overview to the VMware partner program.