"This new milestone in our ongoing relationship with Sun gives customers what they want: a combination of advanced technologies that deliver strong business value," said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware, as Sun and VMware today announced an OEM agreement to expand their virtualization offerings.

"The benefits of lower capital and operating expenses, business continuity, security and a greener datacenter are driving strong demand for VMware virtualization software on Sun x64 server and storage systems," Greene continued.

Starting today, Sun is offering the VMware Infrastructure product suite on Sun hardware systems with full support from Sun.

This move is aimed at helping enable customers to capitalize on the high performance, scalability and energy efficiency of Sun's x64 servers while leveraging VMware's virtualization solutions to improve asset utilization, operational efficiency, and business agility.

Sun and VMware will continue their robust qualification program of VMware products on Sun systems. The two companies plan to also collaborate on system management configuration, deployment and monitoring for each other's products.