DCML And Oasis Team To Boost Data-Center Interoperability

The Data Center Markup Language organization said Monday that it has joined with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (Oasis) in an effort to further advance its data-center interoperability push for promoting a standard for utility computing. By joining Oasis, proponents of the DCML standard hope to cross a major barrier in adoption of its data-center standards--the inclusion of major server and operating system vendors.

The DCML effort has been led by Computer Associates, EDS, Opsware, and Tibco Software. In May, the organization published a framework specification intended to improve interoperability among various components by establishing a way to describe the data-center environment, the relationships between the components, and policies governing management.

The XML-based framework defines a conceptual data model in which elements of the data center can be described, with process rules for interpretation, including grammar and structure to build networks, servers, applications, and services.

What the fledging standards effort has lacked in participation of some of the major hardware and software vendors in the industry, but Oasis counts as its members Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.

"Transitioning the DCML organization to Oasis marks the next significant milestone in the development of the specification and promises to further accelerate its adoption amongst organization worldwide," Louis Blatt, senior VP of product management and strategy at CA and president of DCML, said in a statement.DCML joins a list of other standards specification that have been developed at OASI, including the Security Assertion Markup Language, Web Services Distributed Management, Web Services Security, and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration.

The Oasis-DCML member section will be managed by a steering committee made up of existing DCML board of directors; others may be added in the future.