VMware has signed an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with HP to integrate HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping software into the VMware vCenter suite and also to work on new datacentre management initiatives. In addition, HP has integrated VMware ThinApp with the HP Client Automation policy-based management platform.

The agreement expands their existing relationship formed to enable customers build and manage dynamic datacentres for delivering IT as a service.

Under the OEM agreement, VMware will integrate HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping software as a virtual appliance into VMware vCenter ConfigControl in 2010. The combined software is expected to provide VMware vCenter administrators, visualisation of how business services running in VMware virtual machines map to the physical infrastructure.

VMware has said that the combined software would enable customers to manage their heterogeneous infrastructures through mapping, as well as automation of management tasks including change detection, configuration updates, provisioning, patching and enforcement of compliance and security policies.

VMware reported that customers can use the distributed infrastructure and preconfigured templates available in HP Client Automation software to manage VMware ThinApp’s new management functionality and decreasing infrastructure requirements.