Portland, Ore. – May 28, 2013 –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 it has formed a group to address the need for Software Defined Data Center management standards. The DMTF’s Open Software Defined Data Center (OSDDC) Incubator will work to develop standard architectures and definitions to describe the emerging technology that is expected to revolutionize IT infrastructure in the coming years.

While various management standards exist for physical, virtual and cloud-based systems, the industry is currently lacking standard architectures and definitions to describe the abstract, pooled resources of the Software Defined Data Center. Led by Broadcom, Cisco Systems, EMC, Fujitsu, Huawei, NetApp, Oracle and VMware, Inc., DMTF’s OSDDC Incubator will develop a set of whitepapers to outline a clear definition and scope of the SDDC concept, including Use Cases, Taxonomy and Terminology, High-level Architecture and Standards Gap Analysis.

“As Software Defined Data Center technology emerges, it’s important that we work together to develop a common understanding of this new architectural model and look for ways to provide customer interoperability through best practices and standards,” said Winston Bumpus, DMTF Chairman of the Board. “DMTF’s OSDDC Incubator will lay important groundwork, based on real-world customer use cases and requirements, that will form the foundation of critical standards activities in this area.”

The Open Software Defined Data Center Incubator was formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, which enables interested DMTF members to work together to produce informational specifications that can later be used in the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements DMTF’s mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards. 

DMTF has had previous success with the standards incubation process through its Open Cloud Standards Incubator, which led to the creation of the Cloud Management Working Group (CMWG), and the Software License Management Incubator, which later became the Software Entitlement Working Group (SEWG). The CMWG is currently working to develop specifications that achieve interoperable cloud infrastructure management between service providers and their consumers and developers, while the SEWG is working to address software license management challenges in the cloud. 

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 17 innovative, industry-leading technology companies. They include Broadcom Corporation; CA Technologies; Cisco; Citrix Systems, Inc.; Fujitsu; Hitachi, Ltd.; HP; Huawei; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; NetApp; Oracle; Red Hat; SunGard Availability Services; Telecom Italia and VMware, Inc. 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.