Management Matters this month:

FEATURES

• Message from the Chairman: The DMTF Initiatives Program
• Alliance Program Feature: How to start an Alliance with DMTF
• Working with the Object Management Group on a UML profile for CIM
• Visit with DMTF Industry Experts at Management Developers Conference 2008

EVENTS

• See the Latest in Virtualization Technology at VMworld 2008
• Join Hundreds of Developers at the Storage Developer Conference
• SVM 2008 in Munich, Germany: Bringing the World’s Technology Together
• See Demonstrations and meet industry experts from the CDM Forum and the SM Forum

REGULARS

• 2008 Member Survey Results: Level of Membership Participation
• Call for Contributors
• Member Feedback Welcomed

FEATURES

Message from the Chairman: The DMTF Initiatives Program

This month, we’d like to highlight the DMTF management initiatives program. As our organization evolves, we have focused on achieving interoperability between member companies and the industry, while maintaining relevance for our audiences (IT personnel, implementers, member companies and alliance partners). One of the keys to success is the structure of our management initiative program. By packaging elements of marketing support and interoperability tools, to help integration and flexibility key to controlling costs, DMTF management initiatives deliver functionality to specific vertical applications and industries.

The management initiatives program, which began in 2007, serves as an umbrella tying these various support activities together. DMTF gives the marketing committee the primary focus to govern initiatives, as the generation of collateral and messaging is the initial focus to generate interest and derive requirements. DMTF aligns the initiatives at a level specific to customers who view the technology. The work in the Technical Committee/workgroups (models and profiles) and the Interop Committee (including forums and the test/compliance profiles) is equally critical in the success of these initiatives as they mature and help customers realize the benefits of interoperability across vendors.

Four current initiatives fall under the initiative program umbrella, CDM, DASH and SMASH, as well as SMI-S, which was developed by our Alliance Partner, SNIA. Each initiative offers DMTF and its customers’ something different:

• CDM is an extension of CIM, and has been widely used within the industry to evaluate the health of computer systems in multi-vendor environments.
• DASH is a suite of specifications that takes full advantage of the DMTF’s Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification and provides standards for secure out-of-band and remote management of desktop and mobile systems.
• SMASH a suite of specifications that delivers architectural semantics, industry standard protocols and profiles to unify the management of the data center.
• SMI-S standardizes interoperable storage management technologies, based on the foundation provided by DMTF’s CIM and WBEM.

All management initiatives are built on DMTF technologies and add marketing and interoperability activities. For example the SM Forum provides the interoperability activities for SMASH and DASH.

Initiatives allow companies to work together to develop value propositions that resonate with their customer sets, while creating demand for the standards developed in the DMTF workgroups.

As always, please contact me with any questions or comments.

Mike Baskey
DMTF Chairman

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