VMware and NetApp made a couple of milestone announcements, starting with the former’s acquisition of Shavlik. VMware said in a press release it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the develop of SaaS IT management solutions designed for SMBs.

The two companies have a history of cooperation, and VMware’s acquisition of Shavlik probably means they’ve kicked it up a notch:

“Today’s announcement builds upon the successful relationship built between VMware and Shavlik via VMware GO™, a joint SaaS offering assisting SMBs with rapid deployment and management of VMware vSphere.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is expected to be completed later this quarter. VMware will integrate Shavlik into its operations to offer SMBs centralized IT management services, as well as simplified deployment and automation in the cloud.

Prior to the Shavlik deal, VMware acquired SlideRocket for an undisclosed sum to offer customers presentations-as-a-Service. The virtualization giant also had developments in the open-source space, especially in everything to do with Cloud Foundry – its open source PaaS steadily gaining momentum.

Moving over to NetApp, the cloud company also had a major announcement at the same time we’ve learned of VMware’s latest acquisition.  The company joined Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program with a new integrated private cloud offering. The NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco datacenter architecture is designed to help customers scale their resources easily, as well to provide a great deal of automation and self provisioning, according to the company.

The architecture is comprised of Cisco UCS servers and Nexus switches, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2, a software bundle by NetApp and some other components by the three companies. This new offering represents a great leap in the business relations between NetApp, Microsoft and Cisco, and some more competition for other vendors to tackle.