PORTLAND, Oregon. March 22, 2007 The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF), the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards, today announced details of its Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) Initiative a forthcoming suite of specifications that takes full advantage of the DMTFs Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification delivering standards-based Web services management for desktop and mobile client systems. Through the DASH Initiative, the DMTF will provide the next generation of standards for secure out-of-band and remote management of desktop and mobile systems.

As outlined in a white paper released today, the DASH Initiative will deliver a set of specifications that provides architectural semantics, industry standard protocols and a set of profiles to standardize the secure management of desktop and mobile systems independent of machine state, operating platform or vendor. By tapping into the power of WS-Management, which enables a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across the entire IT infrastructure, DASH integrates desktop and laptop management into an end-to-end management solution. In addition, DASH works in concert with the DMTFs widely-implemented Common Information Model (CIM), so that it is easily incorporated into existing management environments.

Since the DMTFs Desktop and Mobile Work Group (DMWG) was announced, the group has attracted more than 180 members from over 35 different companies, reflecting enormous support from the industry, said Winston Bumpus, president, DMTF. The result is DASH, a significant step forward that utilizes the latest technologies to provide an advanced framework for desktop and mobile management. By delivering an interoperable approach and relief for this key pain point in the distributed enterprise, DASH will facilitate new levels of efficiency and help reduce costs.

The DMTFs DASH white paper is available for download now. For more information on the DASH Initiative, visit the DMTF Web site at http://www.dmtf.org/standards/dash.

Industry Support for DASH

Broadcom As an original founder, a long-time driver and a key contributor to the DMWG and the DASH Initiative, Broadcom is committed to providing standard-based management solutions to our enterprise customers, said Greg Young, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's High-Speed Controller line of business. As a result, Broadcom is one of the first in the industry to provide DASH solutions in 2007 as part of our industry-leading line of Gigabit-Ethernet controller chips. Our support for DASH reinforces our commitment to the DMTF standards and to driving emerging standard-based technology.

Dell Dell is a founder and co-chair of the DMTF Desktop and Mobile Working Group because we want to help customers simplify systems management, said Margaret Franco, director, Dell business desktops. DASH specifications, along with standards-based hardware, like Dell Precision workstations, OptiPlex desktops and Latitude notebooks, will deliver advanced systems management capabilities, support richer IT usage models and help customers manage costs.

HP This industry-wide DASH effort will further HPs goal of reducing the total cost of technology ownership for business customers, said Alan Reed, vice president, Business PC Research & Development, HP. The advancement and standardization of Web services-based management will solve some of the most difficult client management scenarios by enabling always-available, secure, and agentless management on HP Compaq business desktop, notebook and workstation platforms.

IBM DASH is a great complement to IBM Director and our suites of industry-leading systems management tools, said Dr. Tom Bradicich, IBM Fellow and vice president, Systems Technology, Blade, Rack and x86 Servers. By leveraging DMTF Management Profiles, the DASH Initiative will provide advanced manageability of client systems.

Intel As a leader in industry standards for PC manageability for over two decades and as a founding member of the DMTF, Intel supports DASH as another advancement for IT as we move into the WS-Management era, said Gregory Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intels Digital Office Platform Division. IntelÆ vPro technology was originally designed to support a seamless transition to this new standard, and our 2007 product roadmap enables one of the industrys first DASH and WS-Management supported enterprise PCs through our next-generation IntelÆ vPro technology.

Microsoft Microsoft is excited to see DASH and the WS-Management standard introduce XML Web services into the arena of desktop and mobile management, said Larry Orecklin, general manager of System Center marketing, Microsoft. We have been a strong advocate of standards, such as WS-Management, as part of our Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) and have accelerated the adoption of these technologies in Windows Vista and our System Center family of management solutions.

Novell With an ever growing mobile work force, secure Web services-based management is critical to keeping cost and complexity in check, said Alan Murray, vice president of product management at Novell. The DASH specifications will provide Novell systems management solutions with a consistent interface for managing software and hardware assets for desktops and mobile devices.

Symantec Interoperable, secure, and functionally rich management of multi-vendor desktop and mobile hardware is very important to Symantec, said Mark Bregman, chief technology officer of Symantec Corporation. As a leader in providing platform agnostic infrastructure software, we support the DMTF in providing a comprehensive framework for interoperable desktop management through this specification.

WBEM Solutions WBEM Solutions plans to add support for the DMTF DASH Initiative to our standards-based management solutions and products. said Troy Biegger, vice president of Marketing and Sales, WBEM Solutions, Inc. As the industry leader of DMTF standards-based commercial management solutions, DASH support in our product and service offerings will provide our customers with enterprise-level management capabilities for desktop and mobile management.

More industry support for the DMTFs DASH from companies and organizations including AMD, Avocent and NVIDIA can be found on the DMTF's Web site.

About the DMTF
With more than 3,500 active participants representing 39 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 initiatives and standards. DMTF management technologies include the Common Diagnostic Model (CDM), Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) and Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) Initiatives, as well as Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) including protocols such as CIM-XML and Web Services for Management (WS-Management) - which are all based on the Common Information Model (CIM). Information about the DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.