Open Cloud Standards Incubator Created to Address Management Interoperability for Cloud Systems

PORTLAND, Ore. - April 27, 2009 - The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced that it has formed a group dedicated to addressing the need for open management standards for cloud computing. The "Open Cloud Standards Incubator" will work to develop a set of informational specifications for cloud resource management.

As virtualization technology continues to be more rapidly adopted, it is emerging as a common enabling foundation for delivering software solutions into IT environments along with the potential to lower IT costs and improve operational efficiencies. While deploying virtualization technologies it is also critical to have comprehensive management capabilities associated with the implementation. Along with the adoption of virtualization, more and more enterprise IT customers are looking at the cloud computing paradigm to better deliver services to their customers.

No specific standards currently exist for enabling interoperability between private clouds within enterprises and hosted or public cloud providers. DMTF's Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on addressing these issues by developing cloud resource management protocols, packaging formats and security mechanisms to facilitate interoperability.

"Cloud computing will have a major impact on IT management," said Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. "With the DMTF's track record for leading the industry in the development of proven standards for management interoperability, along with its extensive network of Alliance Partners, this Open Cloud Standards Incubator provides an ideal setting for initiating work on specifications to enable interoperable cloud management."

The work of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aims to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability and provide management consistency across cloud and enterprise platforms.

The Open Cloud Standards Incubator was formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, which enables like-minded DMTF members to work together and produce informational specifications that can later be fast-tracked through the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements the DMTF mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards.

The current incubator leadership board consists of AMD, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Savvis, Sun Microsystems, and VMware. Please click here for more information, or to learn more about participating.

Industry Support for Open Cloud Standards Incubator "As a DMTF board member and long-time contributor to many DMTF standards, AMD welcomes the creation of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator to help tackle the problem of managing heterogeneous cloud resources and achieving interoperability between clouds," said Pat Patla, general manager and vice president, Server and Workstation business, AMD. "IT customers consistently tell us that, while they like to take advantage of new technologies to benefit their companies, they also need to contain datacenter management complexity and IT costs. By supporting industry standards for systems management and interoperability, we can better deliver on this goal of making critical IT technologies like cloud computing simpler and more cost-effective to deploy and maintain."

"As cloud technology evolves, it's clear that standardized interoperability will be a fundamental requirement for bringing its current and future promise to life," said David Bernstein, Vice President, Office of the CTO with Cisco. "This is the case at many levels and across the entire spectrum -- from virtual machines all the way to the network. The work in DMTF is a crucial collaboration effort in the march toward cloud interoperability. In cloud computing, the 'network matters' - and we plan to contribute substantially to this effort."

"With thousands of enterprise customers relying on Citrix Delivery Center products to deliver applications and desktops as a cloud-like service to their users, Citrix has seen cloud computing rapidly emerge as a dominant model for delivering and managing applications and desktops in enterprise environments," said Simon Crosby, CTO, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. "As cloud computing for the enterprise evolves, the need for a highly collaborative entity such as the DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator will be crucial for ensuring interoperability and management consistency across cloud platforms."

"EMC foresees leveraging several key elements of focus for the DMTF, including information and infrastructure management, cloud computing, virtualization, SOA, and master data management, as companies move toward virtualized data centers of the future," said Wayne Adams, Director of Industry Standards at EMC. "The DMTF's focus is important as a building block for what's to come. EMC, as a longstanding DMTF Board Member, is pleased to be part of this effort."

"As every market matures, so evolves the need for standards," said James Mouton, Chief Technology Officer, Technology Solutions Group, HP. "HP sees that the right balance between industry standards and proprietary technologies propels the industry forward, fostering collaboration and innovation. We look forward to participating in this and other standards bodies."

"For many years, IBM has advocated common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable standards bodies, and cloud computing is no exception," said Erich Clementi, General Manager, Enterprise Initiatives, IBM. "Open technical standards are integral to enabling the delivery of everything from health care, to business services and consumer entertainment. IBM is committed to working with its industry peers to make it easier for clients to manage emerging cloud environments that include technology from multiple vendors."

"Intel supports the DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator because it provides the underpinnings for openness and interoperability in the IT environment," said Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel's Software and Services Group, and general manager Systems Software Division. "Intel values cloud standards as a way to provide a solid foundation for continued innovation in the cloud. Therefore, as a founding member, Intel looks forward to working with our partners and the community to foster robust standards for the cloud."

"As cloud computing models emerge and evolve in a significant way to deliver reliable, automated services across private, hosted and public environments, standards provide a base of consistent, interoperable management across different cloud service implementations," said Brad Anderson, general manager, Microsoft Management and Services Division. "The DMTF's Open Cloud Standards Incubator is a productive forum to define open standards for managing across cloud environments. Microsoft looks forward to actively participating with the broad and diverse set of other industry members in this effort."

"Novell strongly believes that open standards are essential for promoting and easing the adoption of virtual infrastructure management and cloud interoperability," said Eric Anderson, VP Systems and Resource Management Engineering at Novell. "We are committed to further co-developing and supporting these open standards in Novell's Service-Driven Data Center. In a virtualized environment, the DMTF system virtualization standards and emerging cloud interoperability incubator deliver a complete, federated view of the resources that need to be managed across private and public clouds. These specifications are a crucial foundation for the service-oriented, next-generation distributed data center."

"Red Hat is pleased to join with other industry leaders in the DMTF Cloud Incubator project," said Mike Evans, vice president, Corporate Development at Red Hat. "Interest in cloud computing is growing among our end customers, service providers and industry vendor partners, and many early cloud deployments are based on open source infrastructure technologies. We believe that customers will be best able to enjoy the full benefits of cloud computing with solutions that are based on open standards and that are highly compatible. Red Hat's leadership position in the open source market makes us well-suited to work with our partners to help deliver these standards."

"As a global provider of virtualized and cloud compute IT services, Savvis is focused on delivering highly flexible solutions with greater levels of control for our enterprise customers," said Bryan Doerr, Savvis CTO. "We are keen to heighten industry awareness and education about the enterprise cloud paradigm and the need for interoperability. Savvis supports DMTF as it focuses on developing cloud resource management standards and protocols, packaging formats and security mechanisms to facilitate interoperability."

"Ensuring interoperability among clouds is essential to the proliferation and adoption of cloud computing among developers and enterprise users," said Lew Tucker, CTO, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems. "Sun is committed to bringing open and interoperable clouds to market and is joining other leading vendors in actively engaging in this new DMTF effort."

"The new DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator is a step forward in enabling interoperability and portability between compute clouds," said Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO of VMware."The ultimate goal is to provide customers choice as to where they can most efficiently and safely run their applications. This may be in an internal cloud within their own datacenter or in clouds managed by external providers. With our anticipated launch of VMware vSphere 4, we take a step in this direction with full support of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Furthermore, we are committed to working with our partners in developing and supporting the other critical standards that will enable this open cloud computing vision."

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 16 innovative, industry-leading technology companies. They include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); Broadcom Corporation; CA; Citrix; Dell; EMC; Fujitsu; HP; Hitachi, Ltd.; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; Novell; Oracle; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; and VMware. 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.

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