Unikernels (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7053638, https://galois.com/project/halvm/) are working on related research issues, from the bottom up.

We need a cross-distro dependency manager that can generate app-liance images for baremetal, lxc, kvm, aws/xen, vmware, azure/hyperv, illumos/bsd/zones, etc. Such a dependency manager could encode management-related policy (e.g. networking) into an image manifest that could be parsed by deployment tools. As an image format, OVF was ratified by DMTF and may have useful concepts, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Virtualization_Format