Due to the rapid advancement of DMTF technologies, such as CIM, the DMTF defined an "End of Life" process for its Desktop Management Interface (DMI), which ended March 31, 2005. The industry's first desktop management standard, DMI gave component vendors - for the first time - a consistent and non-proprietary way to make their products manageable. DMI generates a standard framework for managing and tracking components in a desktop PC, notebook or server.

The DMTF ended active development of new DMI standards on December 31, 2003, and continued to provide bug fixes and specification errata for an additional 12 months. Email support for implementers and users was available until March 31, 2005.

DMTF's DMI self-certification program, which allows member vendors to self-certify DMI 2.0-enabled products, is a highly successful program that has been around since late 1996, with hundreds of products and companies certified. DMI Certifications will continue to be accepted and published by DMTF.