DMTF Unveils CDM Forum Activities

Group to Usher in New Era in Systems Diagnostics, Enabling Cross-Platform Automation

Portland, Ore. – December 6, 2005 – The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF®), the industry organization leading the development of management standards and the promotion of interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments, today announced details of its Common Diagnostics Model (CDM) Forum, a group dedicated to uniting the computer industry on a single interoperable interface to all system diagnostics. Part of the DMTF’s Common Information Model (CIM), the CDM specification is widely used within the industry to evaluate the health of hardware systems in multi-vendor environments. The CDM Forum will extend these capabilities by helping deliver additional compatibility in cross-platform system diagnostics through new conformance testing programs, as well as a Software Developer’s Kit (SDK), which will streamline the development and integration of diagnostic modules within the CIM infrastructure.

CDM creates diagnostic instrumentation that can be utilized by platform management applications, and its tight synergy with the other models in CIM enables further integration of diagnostics into critical management functions. By developing new certification tests and SDKs, the CDM Forum will provide new levels of interoperability to help drive automation in support of end users’ grid and utility computing objectives.

“Effective diagnostics is a cornerstone of successful systems management in the data center and distributed environments,” said Winston Bumpus, president, DMTF. “The DMTF’s CDM has long been the gold standard, and now with the formation of the CDM Forum we look forward to additional interoperability gains at an accelerated pace.”

Industry Support for the CDM Forum

AMD
“AMD is committed to helping drive broad industry adoption of common diagnostic testing tools,” said Randy Allen, corporate vice president, Server and Workstation Division, Microprocessor Solutions Sector, AMD. “Our role in the new CDM Interoperability Forum subgroup of the DMTF Interoperability Committee will help us do just that, as will working closely with our OEM customers to provide CDM modules that can help simplify processor diagnostics for the multitude of platforms based on AMD64 processor technology with industry-leading performance per watt.”

Dell
“Dell is committed to helping customers simplify the diagnosis of disparate systems in the data center by reducing the number of tools and processes needed to manage standards-based servers,” said Pete Morowski, vice president, software solutions at Dell. “CDM offers a widely used starting point, which will allow us to streamline IT operations in customers’ environments.”

HP
“The DMTF’s improved Common Diagnostics Model (CDM v2) is a powerful tool that will help provide common diagnosis between vendors and suppliers,” said Greg Shoemaker, vice president, Central Direct Procurement, Global Operations, HP. “Broad adoption of CDM v2 will move the industry closer to achieving seamless integration and, in turn, will help lower the cost of customer ownership and simplify diagnosis. This will benefit not only OEMs like HP, but also the supplier base.”

IBM
“As a co-founder of the DMTF’s Common Diagnostics Model, IBM is pleased to see this has enabled many powerful tools designed to increase system availability and lower the cost of ownership for our customers,” said Dr. Tom Bradicich, CTO, xSeries and BladeCenter division, IBM Systems and Technology Group. “This newly chartered Forum will take Common Diagnostics to the next level, by driving the interoperability so crucial to pervasive industry adoption of this standard.”

The CDM Forum invites both developers of diagnostics modules and consumers of diagnostics information to join and be involved in the Forum. For more information, the CDM Forum’s charter can be downloaded in PDF format.

About the DMTF
With more than 3,500 active participants, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development of management standards and the promotion of interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments. DMTF standards provide common management infrastructure components for instrumentation, control and communication in a platform-independent and technology neutral way. DMTF standards include the Common Information Model (CIM), communication/control protocols like Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and the Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) initiative. Information about DMTF’s standards and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.

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