VMware Tuesday announced it had snapped-up Dunes Technologies, a start-up specializing in business process automation and management in virtual environments.

VMware announced the deal, the terms of which are undisclosed, at its VMworld 2007 conference in San Francisco. VMware says the buy will help it automate the provisioning and retiring of virtual machines, and that Dunes’ technology is complementary to products such as VMware Lab Manager and VMware Virtual Desktop Manager.

“As customers move toward large-scale virtual infrastructure deployments, they need solutions that allow them to maintain control over a growing number of virtual machines. Dunes has developed a powerful orchestration platform that will allow us to automate the entire virtual machine life cycle from requisition to de-commissioning,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware, in a company press release.

Dunes, a Swiss company founded in 2001 with offices in Stamford, Conn., last week announced virtual appliances to address desktop and life-cycle management for small to midsize companies. The appliances use Dunes’ Virtual Service Orchestrator, or VS-O, platform as their underlying architecture. VS-O is able to execute predefined tasks by tapping into its policy, scripting and workflow engines. The platform works without software agents and ties into third-party systems via APIs to enable process automation.

Industry watchers have been tracking Dunes and say the company was gaining ground with its technology in the U.S. market. “Dunes is really getting some traction in the market for their desktop virtualization and management products,” says Stephen Elliot, a research manager covering enterprise system management at IDC.

Dunes officials said in a VMware press release the acquisition will help VMware customers adhere to compliance regulations and maintain control of their virtual environments.

“VMware customers will be able to implement best practice operational processes for virtual infrastructure and ensure strict compliance with corporate IT standards and policies,” said Stefan Hochuli Paychere, co-founder and CTO of Dunes.

Dunes competes with fellow start-ups such as Veeam, Vizioncore and Virtugo Software, all of which recently announced products and plans to expand their separate capabilities to manage VMware virtual environments.