  Measurements of open charm production cross sections in deep-inelastic ep
scattering at HERA from the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations are combined. Reduced
cross sections sigma_red^{c\bar{c}} for charm production are obtained in the
kinematic range of photon virtuality 2.5<Q2<2000 GeV2 and Bjorken scaling
variable 0.00003<x<0.05. The combination method accounts for the correlations
of the systematic uncertainties among the different data sets. The combined
charm data together with the combined inclusive deep-inelastic scattering cross
sections from HERA are used as input for a detailed NLO QCD analysis to study
the influence of different heavy flavour schemes on the parton distribution
functions. The optimal values of the charm mass as a parameter in these
different schemes are obtained. The implications on the NLO predictions for
W^{\pm} and Z production cross sections at the LHC are investigated. Using the
fixed flavour number scheme, the running mass of the charm quark is determined.
