PORTLAND, Ore. – October 7, 2014 – DMTF, an industry standards organization working to simplify the manageability of network-accessible technologies through open and collaborative efforts by leading technology companies, today announced the formation of its new Scalable Platforms Management Forum (SPMF). SPMF will create and publish an open industry standard specification and schema that meets the expectations of end users for simple, modern and secure management of scalable platform hardware.

Scalability in today’s cloud- and web-based infrastructures is increasingly achieved with horizontal, scale-out solutions, which often include large quantities of simple servers. The usage model of scale-out hardware is drastically different than that of traditional enterprise platforms, and requires a new approach to management. The SPMF will create a standard to address the needs of IT professionals drawing from experience gained in widely-used protocols, such as REST, and constructs such as JSON and/or OData. This standard should enable customers to integrate SPMF solutions within their existing tool chains.  

“Until now, many end users have been developing their own tools for scale-out management, typically using JSON-oriented RESTful interfaces,” said Jeff Hilland, president, DMTF. “An open industry standard that meets scalability requirements and integrates easily with the existing tool chain in multi-vendor scale-out deployments will be a significant benefit not only to scale-out customers, but to traditional enterprises as well.”

Company Support for SPMF

Broadcom

“Broadcom has been a leader in providing server manageability solutions for the industry and in our products for more than a decade. Providing simple, secure, standards-based hardware manageability for the fast growing cloud and mega-datacenter environments has not been adequately addressed by the industry,” said Ed Redmond, Vice President and General Manager for Broadcom's Compute and Connectivity Group. “We are excited to join DMTF’s Scalable Platforms Management Forum to provide leadership in this effort.”

Dell

“Dell has long been a member of the DMTF and is happy to be part of the Scalable Platforms Management Forum. Its goal in addressing the growing challenges with scalable platform hardware management aligns well with Dell’s vision of modern data management,” said Jimmy Pike, VP/Senior Fellow & Chief Architect, Dell Enterprise Solutions.

Emerson

“Emerson Network Power is excited to be part of the Scalable Platforms Management Forum and play a vital part in creating the scalable, secure, and adaptable management standard for modern datacenter IT infrastructure,” said Steve Geffin, VP of Solutions Architecture at Emerson Network Power. “Emerson is eager to adopt the specification across its diverse IT product portfolio.”

HP

"HP is committed to the promise of an industry-standard, lightweight, and REST-based management standard specification to help improve data center scalability and performance management needs of customers worldwide,” said Keith McAuliffe, Vice President & Chief Technologist, HP Servers. 

Intel

"With the growth of Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) in the datacenter, the Scalable Platforms Management Forum plays a crucial role in establishing a standardized solution for modern hardware management," said Billy Cox, General Manager of SDI Software Development at Intel Corporation. "SPMF's enablement work will be the basis for the software manageability interface for efficiently managed data centers of the future."

Microsoft

“As one the largest providers of private, hosted and public clouds, Microsoft is keenly aware of the need for simple, scalable, secure management infrastructure. We strongly support the DMTF Scalable Platforms Management Forum for managing hardware and are bringing our experiences and expertise to ensure the results are pragmatic and deployable. A well-designed schema exposed through OData REST APIs that are based on an open standard is exactly what we need,” said Jeffrey Snover, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Corporation. 

Detailed information on all DMTF standards can be found at www.dmtf.org/standards. Those interested in supporting and joining DMTF’s efforts to identify and create standards can learn more at www.dmtf.org/join.

About DMTF

The DMTF is an industry standards organization working to simplify the manageability of network-accessible technologies through open and collaborative efforts by leading technology companies. DMTF creates and drives the international adoption of interoperable management standards, supporting implementations that enable the management of diverse traditional and emerging technologies including cloud, virtualization, network and infrastructure. The organization spans the globe with member companies and alliance partners from varied industry sectors, led by a board of directors from Broadcom Corporation; CA Technologies; Cisco; Citrix Systems, Inc.; Dell; Emerson Network Power; Fujitsu; Hitachi, Ltd.; HP; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; NetApp; Oracle; Software AG; Telecom Italia and VMware, Inc. Information about the DMTF’s leadership, technologies and how to participate can be found at www.dmtf.org.