Portland, Ore. – August 30, 2011 – The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF®), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced that its Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Server Management Command Line Protocol (SM CLP) specifications have been adopted as International Standards by the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). These standards are the first DMTF specifications to be published internationally, marking a substantial achievement for the organization.

OVF is the cornerstone of DMTF’s virtualization management and cloud standards development efforts. The standard describes an open, secure, portable and extensible format for packaging and distributing workloads consisting of one or more virtual machines and applications, allowing end-users to distribute applications into virtual environments with minimal effort. SM CLP enables simple, intuitive remote management of heterogeneous servers in the data center and is an essential component of DMTF’s Server Management Architecture for System Hardware (SMASH) standard. Both specifications deliver critical efficiencies and cost savings for managers in a variety of IT environments.

“We are very pleased to have the DMTF specifications for OVF and SM CLP submitted to JTC 1 and receive the necessary support from the national bodies for adoption as ISO/IEC standards,” said Karen Higginbottom, Chair of JTC 1.  “OVF is a widely implemented tool for distributing workloads in virtual and cloud environments, while SM CLP simplifies server management. These standards will improve management interoperability within data centers and are a great result of the cooperation between JTC 1 and DMTF.”

As the IT industry continues to make greater use of cloud environments and expand systems beyond the traditional data center, standards-based management solutions become even more critical for a seamless user experience. ISO and IEC are the world’s largest developers and publishers of international standards. ISO/IEC publication provides specifications with an additional mark of credibility that helps ensure implementers that products and solutions based on the standard meet strict quality guidelines and will perform as expected.

“ISO standardization is a key criterion for many government bodies and related organizations when determining what technologies to use,” said Jeff Hilland, DMTF Vice President of Technology. “Having OVF and SM CLP adopted by ISO and IEC makes these solutions more accessible to IT managers worldwide, helping to realize DMTF’s mission of enabling interoperable IT management.”

The two standards, ISO/IEC 13187: 2011 “Information Technology – Server Management Command Line Protocol (SM CLP) Specification” and ISO/IEC 17203 2011 “Open Virtualization Format” can be purchased through the ISO website at http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue.htm or the IEC webstore at http://webstore.iec.ch.

About DMTF
DMTF enables more effective management of millions of IT systems worldwide by bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on the development, validation and promotion of systems management standards. The group spans the industry with 160 member companies and organizations, and more than 4,000 active participants crossing 43 countries. The DMTF board of directors is led by 15 innovative, industry-leading technology companies. They include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); Broadcom Corporation; CA Technologies; Cisco; Citrix Systems, Inc.; EMC; Fujitsu; HP; Huawei; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; Oracle; Red Hat and VMware, Inc. With this deep and broad reach, DMTF creates standards that enable interoperable IT management. DMTF management standards are critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools and solutions within the enterprise. Information about DMTF technologies and activities can be found at http://www.dmtf.org.