Twenty-five companies have unveiled the XML-based
standards initiative DCML (Data Centre Markup Language). The
standard is designed to serve as the foundation on which users can
build and deploy enterprise-capable applications.
Led by Opsware, Electronic Data Systems, 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 DCML is to introduce a simpler way to
achieve interoperability among widely disparate IT systems, thereby
encouraging the use of utility computing among larger
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 then continue to remain very labour
intensive," said Donna Scott, a senior analyst at Gartner.
The proposed standard encompasses a range of datacentre elements
including network and storage components. It also contains support
for operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Unix, in addition
to software infrastructure products and accompanying
applications.
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.
Marc Andreessen, Opsware's chairman, said DCML can be thought of
as HTML for the datacentre.
While it may take some time for it to become widely adopted -
particularly by IBM, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft - Andreessen
said he believed DCML will follow the same acceptance as did HTML
and TCP/IP.
Version 1.0 of DCML will be out early next year. Opsware is
expected to make its offering fully complaint with the
specification by the end of the first quarter of 2004.
Ed Scannell writes for InfoWorld