AMD, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Sun Teams for New Web Services Specification

AMD, Dell, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced the publication of Web Services Management (WS-Management), a Web services specification that addresses the cost and complexity of IT management by providing a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across their entire IT systems.

"With this specification, management is now a core part of the Web services world and no longer an afterthought or just something that takes place in the datacenter. This is an important step for IT managers who have been looking for management systems to fully take advantage of the inherent interoperability that Web services provide," said David Mendlen, director of Web services at Microsoft.

WS-Management http://msdn.microsoft.com/ws/2004/10/ws-management, which was originally known as WMX, was first demonstrated at the WinHEC 2004 conference in Seattle.

By using Web services to manage IT systems, deployments that support WS-Management will enable IT managers to remotely access devices on their networks, regardless of whether the systems are just out of the box, powered down or otherwise unavailable.

"Providing the industry and our customers with a solid, open-standards-based management model demonstrates Intel's commitment to Web services and to system management," said Colin Evans, director of the System Software Lab at Intel.

Microsoft plans to support WS-Management in the next release of Microsoft® Windows Server™ and the next release of Microsoft Operations Manager. Intel plans to support WS-Management in its platform building blocks and will announce specific plans at a future date.

With the goal of accelerating development and acceptance of a standard for Web Services-based systems management, the participating companies plan to present the specification to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) membership, recognizing the DMTF's history of leadership in developing practical management standards based on Web technologies.