Web Services Distributed Management -WSDM- Approved as OASIS Standard

Business Wire, March 9, 2005

BOSTON -- Actional, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, TIBCO, and Others Define Web Services Architecture to Manage Distributed Resources

OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSDM enables management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers through a single interface.

"The industry has been wrestling with the complexity of managing business systems for years," said Cameron Haight, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc. "One of the main challenges stems from the diversity of products enterprises use to construct their business systems. Several providers of these core infrastructure components have come together to address this classic problem by creating an integration layer between managers and the different protocols used to instrument resources. That integration layer is called WSDM, and now that the standard has been built, it is hoped that other technology providers will come on board to help complete the picture."

"WSDM offers a key to solving a long standing pain point for resource providers, management software vendors, and their customers," said Heather Kreger of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. "By integrating heterogeneous resources into heterogeneous management software using heterogeneous protocols and platforms, WSDM uses Web services to start solving the management integration problem."

WSDM consists of two specifications, Management Using Web Services (MUWS) and Management Of Web Services (MOWS). WSDM MUWS defines how to represent and access the manageability interfaces of resources as Web services. It defines a basic set of manageability capabilities, such as resource identity, metrics, configuration, and relationships, which can be composed to express the capability of the management instrumentation. WSDM MUWS also provides a standard management event format to improve interoperability and correlation. WSDM MOWS defines how to manage Web services as resources and how to describe and access that manageability using MUWS. MOWS provides mechanisms and methodologies that enable manageable Web services applications to interoperate across enterprise and organizational boundaries.

"WSDM represents the first step in defining the Web services stack layers for Management," noted Winston Bumpus of Dell, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. "Simultaneously, WSDM MOWS is also the first step in Web services management."

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, stated, "OASIS has been very pleased with the amount of participation in WSDM development and the support we've received from other standards organizations, including the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and the Global Grid Forum (GGF). We appreciate their commitment to collaborate on a consistent management standard for the Web services community. We look forward to engaging with more industry groups and standards organizations as adoption of WSDM grows."

WSDM was developed by members of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, which includes representatives of Actional, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, TIBCO, and others. Participation remains open to all, and suppliers, end-users and system integrators are invited to join OASIS to advance the continued development and adoption of WSDM. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public comment and the wsdm-dev mailing list for exchanging information on implementing the standard.

Industry Support for WSDM

Computer Associates

"The WSDM OASIS Standard will significantly enhance interoperability among management applications and tools, enabling IT organizations to both optimize service levels and reduce operational costs," said Muhi Majzoub, CA's vice president of development. "CA WSDM, our solution for managing services in a service-oriented architecture, will leverage this important new OASIS Standard to help customers maximize the business value generated by their increasingly complex service-oriented environments."

DataPower

"DataPower is proud to have been one of the first Web services security vendors to implement an early version of WSDM in 2003, and as part of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee, we are delighted with its approval as an OASIS Standard. WSDM is critical, not just for managing Web services, but for using Web services to manage all other systems within the enterprise, on demand. Just like SNMP did in its time, WSDM breaks the lock-in between the managed node and the management server," said Eugene Kuznetsov, CTO and Chairman of DataPower.

Fujitsu

"Fujitsu is enthusiastic about the potential of open standards in the area of Web services-based management. The WSDM specifications, MUWS V1.0 and MOWS V 1.0, represent a usable architecture for distributed management, which provides a stable starting point for the design of open management systems. Fujitsu plans an implementation of these WSDM specifications and will in turn provide products reflecting the WSDM V1.0 specifications along with the enhanced capabilities expected from the future work of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee," said Seigo Hirosue, General Manger, Strategy and Technology Division, Software Group, Fujitsu Limited.