HP’s acquisition of 3PAR had ramifications that go far and beyond the confines of HP’s business structure. Every partner and associate of 3PAR became partner and associate to HP. That includes VMware, which has a long-standing relationship with 3PAR in the the storage virtualization business. At HP Discover 2012, theCube host and Wikibon chief analyst Dave Vellante met with HP’s Director of Storage Marketing Craig Nunes and Gary Green, VMware’s VP of Global Strategic Alliances to discuss the finer points of the VMware-HP/3PAR cooperative strategy.

In the early portion of the interview, Green took the conversation back 10 years when VMware first began developing the storage relationship. Customers who began using server virtualization soon realized that they were leaving a tremendous amount of cash and resources on the table by not being prepared to handle the storage aspect of it.

Green then said that VMware is a technology-oriented company and that it needed agile partners like 3PAR to develop a deep roadmap of sharing. Together the companies could determine where each company was going and make sure there was an alignment. They were also able to look at the challenges that affected customers and determine how both companies could work together for better integration.

Nunes briefly highlighted how HP and VMware help customers beyond the technology itself. HP’s 3PAR StoreServ Virtual Guarantee Program promises that it can double VM density on existing servers, increase consolidation and storage utilization ratios, and accelerate virtualization ROI. If they cannot live up to their promise, HP will pay for the hardware and software to get them to those levels.

Vellante then asked both men to shed light on the concept behind software-defined storage, networking, data centers, and other technology. They explained that they are able to decouple services from their underlying hardware infrastructure and provide virtual services that are independent of specific hardware.

To close, Vellante asked each of the guests to discuss how infrastructure has changed in the past 10 years and where he sees it headed 10 years from now. They answered this and many other questions in the full interview, which you can watch right here.