1. A computer-implemented method comprising: discovering hardware resources for a platform that have updateable firmware designated for updating via an operating system of the platform; creating representations to virtualize the hardware resources as devices with respect to a device management system provided by the operating system of the platform, the device management system configured to enable both firmware updates and device driver updates for the hardware resources through the representations; detecting firmware update packages available for one or more of the hardware resources, the firmware update packages: formed in a format that is recognizable as device driver packages handled collectively with one or more other kinds of update packages including device driver updates, and including a field identifying a type of the firmware update package that is configurable to identify a system firmware type and a device firmware type using different identifying type codes included in the field; and distributing the detected firmware update packages to corresponding hardware resources to initiate installation of the firmware update packages by the hardware resources.