Web Services Distributed Management spec approved

OASIS on Wednesday announced that its members have approved the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) specification as an OASIS standard.

WSDM is intended to enable management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers via a single interface, according to OASIS.

WSDM is composed of two technology specifications: Management Using Web Services (MUWS), to define representations of management interfaces, and Management of Web Services (MOWS), to define how to manage Web services as resources and how to describe and access manageability via MUWS.

Members of the OASIS WSDM Technical committee that developed the specification include Actional, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Computer Associates, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, Tibco, and others.

CA, in a prepared statement, said WSDM will enhance interoperability among management applications and tools, enabling optimization of service levels and reduction in operational costs. HP said in a statement that WSDM is a key milestone in providing a standards-based environment for loosely coupled management interactions, which are called for by HP’s own Adaptive Enterprise strategy.

IBM, also in a statement, said WSDM would boost management of SOAs (service-oriented architectures).

An analyst said WSDM would provide for standardization at a time when the market for Web services management is consolidating.

“We're seeing the ‘big boys’ enter with significant products to market, including IBM, HP, and CA,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “As a result, the big initiative is to standardize how these various products can manage the Web services that are running on other people's platforms, especially on IBM, BEA, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun.

“As such, WSDM goes a long way to solve two problems: the use of Web services to manage systems and the ability to manage Web services themselves. What we should expect to see is more consolidation of vendors and products in this space and some agreement on WSDM as the format for solving heterogeneous Web services management issues,” Schmelzer said.