PORTLAND, Ore. Nov. 27, 2007 The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTFÆ), the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management standards and initiatives, today announced it accepted a draft specification that will facilitate the sharing of information between Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) and other management data repositories (MDRs). The new spec, which was submitted by the CMDB Federation (CMDBf) working group, aims to enable organizations to federate and access information from complex, multi-vendor IT infrastructures.

The CMDBf working group is comprised of BMC Software, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft. Since April 2006, this group of industry leaders has collaborated to develop this draft CMDBf specification. In August 2007, the working group announced it completed the spec, and has since submitted it to DMTF for development as an industry standard.

"DMTF's cross-industry representation with 15 technology alliance partners, 4,000 members and 200 companies makes this the ideal place to create an industry standard for CMDB federation and increase the technology's reach," said Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. "The CMDBf submission is groundbreaking work for DMTF because this specification provides a standard way to federate management data stored in multiple different data models, including the DMTF's Common Information Model. Federating this data in a standard way increases an administrator's view into their IT environment."

CIM, short for the Common Information Model, is the basis for the majority of DMTF standards, including Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH). CIM provides a common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications and services, and allows for vendor extensions.

With the CMDBf submission, the DMTF scope now includes federating multiple models for management data. This furthers the organization's goal of increasing management interoperability by standardizing technology that makes management data stored in different manners easily accessible. It also helps vendors and IT users integrate their management data that is stored in a variety of different CMDBs and MDRs. IT administrators benefit because this federated data gives them a more complete picture of their entire IT environment and simplifies the management of a multi-vendor, heterogeneous environment, while avoiding the need to replicate and/or transform data between the various repositories.

The CMDBf submission also gives DMTF more reach because it enables the organization to collaborate in technology areas using different modeling domains (other than CIM) and increases the potential for interoperability of management solutions into those areas.

To access the CMDBf specification that has been submitted to DMTF, please click here.

Industry support for standardizing the CMDB Federation specifications

"The acceptance of the CMDB Federation's specifications by the DMTF reinforces BMC's efforts to provide customers with the most effective solutions to manage IT from the perspective of the business. As a leader in business service management and providing CMDB solutions to customers, we know the important roles integration and interoperability play in implementations and support these efforts to more closely align initiatives from technology providers," said Tom Bishop, chief technology officer, BMC Software, Inc.

"The inability to share data across multiple vendors' solutions has been a major impediment to truly unified enterprise IT management. The DMTF's acceptance of the CMDBf specification paves the way for IT organizations to overcome this limitation so they can more effectively manage even the largest and most complex computing environments," said Marv Waschke, senior technology strategist, CA.

"Fujitsu supports ITIL-based enterprise management. The vendor-neutral CMDB federation standard is a key initiative for us because it enables efficient ITIL-based operations, especially in a multi-vendor customer environment. Fujitsu believes that DMTF's wide range of experience in the enterprise management area, and its open and fair framework, will enable the CMDBf standard to give greater value to enterprise customers. Fujitsu is committed to the continuous and vigorous contribution to CMDBf standardization activities under DMTF," said Yasushi Ishida, Vice President, Software Strategy and Architecture, and Executive Architect, Software Group, Fujitsu Limited.

"DMTF's acceptance of the CMDB Federation specification will help customers unlock the value of federation through effective sharing of information across disparate IT management tools based on a common understanding of their IT environments," said Tim Van Ash, senior product manager, ITIL Software Strategy, Software, HP. "With its long-held commitment to open systems and standards, HP is proud to be part of DMTF's effort, which will help our customers achieve positive business outcomes."

"The addition of CMDBf to the DMTF significantly helps move the industry forward in creating the much needed interoperability for CMDBs and other management data repositories. This linkage is a critical element supporting the success of Autonomic Computing and a requirement for effective service management," said Alan Ganek, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Tivoli Software and Vice President of Autonomic Computing, IBM. "With continued collaboration among DMTF's diverse group of enterprise and resource domain vendors, CMDBf stands to ultimately benefit customers who will more easily be able to view, track and change information essential for efficient and compliant management of their IT, network infrastructures and services."

"Microsoft sees the ability to exchange data between heterogeneous CMDBs as an interoperability goal for the industry," says Larry Orecklin, general manager of System Center at Microsoft. "Microsoft looks forward to wider community input and continued evolution in the DMTF during the standardization process."

About DMTF

With more than 4,000 active participants representing 44 countries and nearly 200 organizations, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management standards and initiatives. During the last 15 years of its history, DMTF management technologies have become critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools, and solutions within the enterprise. By deploying solutions that support DMTF standards, IT managers can choose to deploy a mix of systems and solutions that best meet their users' needs, while reducing management complexity and total cost of ownership. Information about the DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.