25 companies have unveiled an XML-based standards
initiative, called the Data Center Markup Language
(DCML).
The DCML specification is designed to serve as the foundation on
which users can build and deploy enterprise-capable
applications.
Led by Opsware, EDS, Computer Associates International and BEA
Systems, the founding companies also announced the formation of the
DCML Organisation, which will be largely responsible for advancing
and maintaining the proposed standard.
The long-term goal of the standard is to introduce a simpler way
to achieve interoperability among widely disparate IT systems,
thereby encouraging the use of utility computing among large
datacentres.
"Without a standards-based mechanism that better defines
datacentre relationships, IT operations management will continue to
struggle with implementing configuration and change management
processes, which would continue to remain very labour intensive,"
said Donna Scott, a senior analyst with Gartner.
The proposed standard encompasses a range of datacentre
elements, including network and storage components as well as
market-leading operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Unix,
and software infrastructure products and accompanying applications,
a spokesman for the organisation said.
According to one Opsware executive, DCML should be thought of as
"HTML for the datacentre".
"HTML is the universal language used to express and share
information through a web browser. Likewise, DCML enables disparate
management systems to share information and function more
co-operatively," said Tim Howes, Opsware's chief technology
officer.
Company officials claimed that some 14 million servers were now
installed in IT organisations around the world, and that figure is
expected to grow to 26 million by the end of 2006.
What has been driving sales of the servers is the shift from
client/server architectures to internet-based ones, they said.
"Defining a uniform set of standards with the datacentre can
offer a framework for large-scale computing projects like utility
computing. [DCML] not only provides a common language to describe
components in a datacentre, but also describe how they interoperate
and can help define the policies that bind them together," said
Darrel Thomas, chief technology officer for EDS Hosting
Services.
Executives from the founding companies contended that DCML is
the first standard model to describe what is contained in a
datacentre and, more specifically, how that environment is
constructed.
By doing so it enables a systematic reproduction, rebuilding, or
reprovisioning of any portion of the datacentre environment.
Users and developers can find more information about the
proposed standard at
www.dcml.org.
Ed Scannell writes for IDG News Service