In a joint press release, the vendors referred to Acadia as “a joint venture focused on accelerating customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures through an end-to-end enablement of service providers and large enterprise customers.” Cisco and EMC are Acadia’s lead investors, with VMware and Intel involved as limited partners. Acadia will begin customer operations in the first quarter of next year, the vendors say.

Acadia is an offshoot of an alliance between EMC, Cisco and VMware called the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE), also officially disclosed today after months of speculation. The vendors today also today launched product bundles called Vblock Infrastructure Packages.

Vblock packages include Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and MDS Fibre Channel switches, EMC Symmetrix V-Max or Clariion storage systems and VMware vSphere software. Vblock 1 is a midsized configuration for 800 to 3,000 virtual machines, and Vblock 2 is a high-end configuration that scales from 3,000 to 6,000 virtual machines. Vblock 0 is an entry level configuration supporting 300 to 800 virtual machines.

The vendors describe Vblock Infrastructure Packages as a “better approach to streamlining and optimizing IT strategies around private clouds.”

The VCE alliance also includes joint sales, support and professional services teams. Professional services include Cloud-based Business Advisory Service, Private Cloud Strategic Impact Advisory Service, Private Cloud Architecture Impact Advisory Service, Virtual Desktop Advisory Service, Cloud Computing Strategy Service, and Vblock Design and Implementation Service.

During a webcast to discuss Acadia and VCE today, CEOs Joe Tucci of EMC and John Chamber said the joint venture would consist of about 130 employees but they have yet to hire its CEO.