HP, VMware Team Up on Virtualization Management

Hewlett-Packard and VMware are looking to make it easier for businesses to manage their virtual and physical client and server environments.

The two companies at the HP Software Universe 2009 show June 16 in Las Vegas announced that VMware in 2010 will integrate HP’s Discovery and Dependency Mapping application into its vCenter ConfigControl software.

The combination of the management software offerings will give users of VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform greater visibility into their environments and a better way to map business services in the virtual environment into their physical systems.

Businesses will have a single window through which to also automate such management tasks as change detection, provisioning, patching, and compliance and security enforcement, according to officials with HP and VMware.

In addition, HP’s Client Automation management platform will now support VMware’s ThinApp application virtualization technology. The support means that users will have an easier time keeping track of virtualized and physical applications.

VMware ThinApp users can take advantage of the preconfigured templates in HP’s Client Automation software and use reports generated by the HP offering to track virtual and physical applications for enhanced asset management.

The two companies also will develop joint go-to-market and sales programs.

Businesses will get multiple benefits from the HP-VMware collaboration, according to Ramin Sayar, vice president of products, software and solutions at HP.

"Customers are looking for a dramatically better approach to IT management in order to reduce costs and risks, while achieving integrated seamless management of the physical and virtual data center," Sayar said in a statement. "The combination of HP software and VMware solutions will provide customers with an end-to-end automated solution for building and managing next-generation data centers."