The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced the release of the new Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) specification. The new specification standardizes interactions between cloud environments to achieve interoperable cloud infrastructure management between service providers and their consumers and developers, enabling users to manage their cloud infrastructure use easily and without complexity.

Cloud computing allows customers to improve the efficiency, availability and flexibility of their IT systems over time. As companies have adopted cloud computing, vendors have embraced the need to provide interoperability between enterprise computing and cloud services. DMTF developed CIMI as a self-service interface for infrastructure clouds, allowing users to dynamically provision, configure and administer their cloud usage with a high-level interface that greatly simplifies cloud systems management.

“The CIMI standard is a critical piece for cloud infrastructure management because it alleviates complexity while improving flexibility, portability and security,” said Winston Bumpus, Chairman of the Board, DMTF. “With the release of the CIMI v1.0 specification, DMTF offers a well-rounded, industry-wide solution for simplifying cloud infrastructure management.”

Today’s release includes two components:

• Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface – (CIMI) Model and REST Interface over HTTP Specification
• Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface – (CIMI) Primer

The CIMI specification is the centerpiece of DMTF’s Cloud Management Initiative, and is the first standard created by the Cloud Management Working Group (CMWG). DMTF’s Cloud Management Initiative includes contributions from additional working groups including the Cloud Auditing Data Federation Working Group (CADF WG), the Network Services Management Working Group (NSM WG), the Software License Management (SLM) Incubator and the System Virtualization, Partitioning, and Clustering Working Group (SVPC WG). Additional announcements are expected from DMTF cloud-related working groups early next year.

DMTF working groups and incubators collaborate with a number of industry organizations in an effort to unify their cloud management initiatives. These organizations include the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), the China Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI), the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the Open Grid Forum (OGF), the Object Management Group (OMG), The Open Group (TOG), the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), the Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum (GICTF) and the TeleManagement Forum (TMF).

For additional information on DMTF’s cloud efforts, including specifications, whitepapers and charters, visit www.dmtf.org/cloud.

Industry Support for CIMI: “As a leader in networking and the emerging Cloud market, Broadcom is pleased to see the release of the CIMI standard for simplifying cloud infrastructure management,” said Greg Scherer, VP of Server and Storage Strategy at Broadcom. “CIMI allows our customers to easily manage their cloud infrastructure in a secure and reliable manner. Broadcom is strongly committed to supporting open standards like CIMI and contributing to its ongoing development.”

“DMTF has developed an important new standard focused on simplifying cloud infrastructure management,” said Paul Lipton, VP, Industry Standards and Open Source, CA Technologies. “CIMI will enable greater interoperability of infrastructure management across a broader range of cloud platforms and represents a significant milestone in the development of secure, cloud management standards for our industry and our customers.”

“Citrix has been a strong promoter of openness and is engaged in the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) standards process to foster open standards that help customers manage their IT infrastructure in an interoperable and secure way. As a leading Virtualization and Cloud platform provider, Citrix has been an influential contributor to the development of Cloud standards under the auspices of the DMTF. As an early proponent of the cloud incubator and a leading member of the cloud standards working group, Citrix is pleased to see the Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) standard published and will propose inclusion of the CIMI implementation into Apache CloudStack project and Citrix CloudPlatform,” said Sheng Liang, CTO Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix.

"Fujitsu is proud to have contributed to the development of a new DMTF Standard by providing our experience based on cloud services and products used by our customers," said Sanya Uehara, Corporate Vice President and Head of Unit, Platform Strategic Planning Unit at Fujitsu. "This is a big step toward the next generation cloud computing environment, which can manage various cloud services and products through a single standard interface. We would like to continue to support CIMI to achieve multi-vendor cloud environments by providing our implementation feedback and experience for future enhancements.”

“HP is proud to have contributed to the development of a new standard for simplifying cloud infrastructure management,” said Jerome Labat, VP of R&D at HP Software’s Cloud Automation Product Unit. “Our contributions to CIMI will enable the standard to help customers easily manage their cloud use, while improving portability and security.”

“Huawei is proud to have contributed to the development of a new standard for simplifying cloud infrastructure management,” said Jeffrey Wheeler, Chief Architect, Cloud Management and Standards at Huawei. “CIMI allows our customers to easily manage their cloud use, while improving portability and security. We look forward to supporting the CIMI standard in future product offerings, while contributing to its ongoing development.”

“The availability of the DMTF CIMI specification is a solid step forward in the standardization that will support interoperable cloud solutions," says Angel Diaz, VP Software Standards at IBM. "When open standards such as CIMI are developed in collaboration with vendors, customers and consortium such as the Cloud Standards Customer Council, cloud consumers will be able to achieve greater interoperability and portability. The results are faster implementation at a lower cost - leading to greater innovation.”

“Microsoft is pleased to have contributed to the development of standards for cloud infrastructure management that build on proven existing DMTF standards such as the Common Information Model and the Open Virtualization Format,” said Paul Cotton, Partner Group Manager at Microsoft.

“Oracle has a longstanding commitment to open standards and, as a leading provider of cloud services and platforms, we have been a strong supporter of open management solutions for cloud computing," said Sushil Kumar, Vice President for Product Strategy and Business Development at Oracle. “Oracle is proud to have played a major role in the development of a new standard for simplifying cloud infrastructure management, both contributing the Oracle Cloud API and serving as Co-Editor of the specification."

"Red Hat is proud to have worked closely with DMTF in the development of a new industry standard for cloud infrastructure management," said David Lutterkort, Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat and DMTF Board Member. "CIMI offers our customers the opportunity to more easily manage their cloud use through a single standard interface. Our implementation of CIMI as part of Apache Deltacloud gives us confidence in the utility of CIMI. We look forward to continuing collaboration and contributions around the CIMI standard to further its future development."

"Helping organizations have an easily managed, secure, enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure is a core focus for SunGard Availability Services," said Chip Childers, Principal Engineer at SunGard Availability Services. "Adoption of the CIMI specification will help enable interoperable management among production cloud environments. We see the new standard as an important advance that further simplifies management and compatibility across disparate enterprise clouds."

"The release of the new DMTF Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) standard is another step forward in enabling interoperability and portability between compute clouds," said Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO of VMware. "The ultimate goal is to provide customers choice as to where they can most efficiently and safely run their applications. This may be in an internal cloud within their own datacenter or in clouds managed by external providers. We have taken a step in this direction with full support of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Furthermore, we are committed to working with our partners in developing and supporting the other critical standards that will enable this open cloud computing vision."

About DMTF

DMTF enables more effective management of millions of IT systems worldwide by bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on the development, validation and promotion of systems management standards. The group spans the industry with 160 member companies and organizations, and more than 4,000 active participants crossing 43 countries. The DMTF board of directors is led by 17 innovative, industry-leading technology companies. They include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); Broadcom Corporation; CA Technologies; Cisco; Citrix Systems, Inc.; EMC; Fujitsu; HP; Huawei; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; NetApp; Oracle; Red Hat; SunGard Availability Services and VMware, Inc. With this deep and broad reach, DMTF creates standards that enable interoperable IT management. DMTF management standards are critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools and solutions within the enterprise. Information about DMTF technologies and activities can be found at http://www.dmtf.org.