Technology Leaders Submit Service Modeling Language (SML) to W3C

Technology Leaders Submit Modeling Specification to the World Wide Web Consortium

Industry Takes Next Step In Standardizing the Description of System Information in XML formats

Redmond, Washington, USA. March 22, 2007.

BEA Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., CA, Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., EMC Corp., HP, IBM Corp., Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp., and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced they have submitted a specification to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for review as an industrywide standard. Called the Service Modeling Language (SML), the specification defines a consistent way to communicate how computer networks, applications, servers and other IT resources are described — or modeled — in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and can help businesses more seamlessly manage the services that are built on these resources. In addition to the base SML specification, a companion specification was submitted to the W3C. Called the SML Interchange Format (SML-IF), it defines how to exchange SML models between applications.

With industry collaboration, SML enables a hierarchy of IT resource models to be created from reusable building blocks rather than requiring custom descriptions of every service, reducing costs and system complexity for customers. These blocks can be defined at the appropriate level of granularity for desired-state management. They include validation constraints that increase the reliability of integrations, opening the door to increased automation. If adopted as a standard, SML will address the industry problem of numerous methods representing the same IT resource. Currently, the use of different formats requires a translation process that can lead to the loss or misinterpretation of technical details.

SML offers support for rich constraints and alignment with XML message exchange architectures — unique properties that make it well-suited for modeling IT resources and services. SML allows developers to build modeling information for applications, IT infrastructure and services that can be used during all stages of the resource life cycle, including deployment and configuration management and resource updating. They are also useful for tactical processes such as management of service levels, availability and capacity.

To visit the member submission page go to:

http://www.w3.org/Submission/2007/01

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq 'MSFT') is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Quote Sheet

"As an industry leader, BEA Systems is committed to working collaboratively to create and co-author standards like SML that enable interoperability and simplification of IT management systems. Given the W3C's support and success with XML standards, we are excited to have SML submitted to the W3C for standardization. With SML, BEA continues with our commitment to provide leadership in the development of W3C XML and Web services standards."

— Zulah Eckert
Senior Principal Technologist
Office of the CTO
BEA Systems Inc.

"Business Service Management (BSM) advocates simplicity, efficiency and interoperability in managing the IT ecosystem. The submission of the SML language to W3C puts us one step closer to helping customers simplify the management of their IT environments, bringing them even closer to their BSM goals."

— Tom Bishop
Chief Technology Officer
BMC Software Inc.

"By promoting standardized modeling of complex IT services, SML will facilitate the management of those services — independent of the development technologies and platforms. CA plans to leverage SML in management solutions that will provide greater flexibility, more automated control and lower cost of ownership."

— Edward Marootian Jr.
Vice President of Product Management and Strategy
Office of the CTO
CA Inc.

"Dell is committed to simplifying the management of IT resources so customers can focus on growing their business. SML is an essential piece of Dell's Unified Manageability Architecture that delivers a standards-based blueprint for simplified, modular systems management and enables a path to 'built-in' management for hardware and software that can yield more robust systems modeling, enabling high availability and standards-based building blocks for business process management."

— Winston Bumpus
Director, Systems Management Architecture and Standards
Dell Product Group
Dell Inc.

"EMC believes that model-based management solutions represent the new path to successfully managing the highly complex, multidomain information infrastructures emerging in today's enterprises. The multivendor SML effort is an important building block and reflective of EMC's standards-driven strategy to ease heterogeneous product interoperability and management in customer environments. We look forward as W3C accelerates the adoption of this foundation technology."

— Jeff Nick
Senior Vice President and CTO
EMC Corp.

"HP believes that automation of IT management processes is a key enabler of Business Technology Optimization because it will help our customers improve IT delivery times, reduce costs and decrease the risks of human error. Automating these tasks will also help reduce the business risk of IT and give enterprises better visibility into the impact of planned or unplanned IT events. SML is an important technical building block toward such levels of automation."

— William Vambenepe
Distinguished Technologist
HP Software

"The submission of SML to W3C is an important milestone for bringing open frameworks into IT management solutions on behalf of our customers. As a leader in open standards-based software, this is an important step in IBM's effort to collaborate with other industry leaders to extend modeling and self-managing capabilities within multivendor IT environments."

— Ric Telford
Vice President
Autonomic Computing
IBM Corp.

"Along with our fellow industry leaders, Intel believes SML is another step in providing enterprises with flexible management and innovative Web services. Using SML, a model-based management system can be built for critical production environments, helping ensure data centers of tomorrow are fully integrated, fully managed and fully scalable. These are mandatory principles from concept to provisioning and from operation to obsolescence."

— Robert B. Crooke
Vice President and General Manager
Business Client Group
Intel Corporation

"Customers tell us they need solutions that that make it easier to integrate and manage end-to-end IT services in heterogeneous environments. That is why Microsoft is delighted to work with the industry and W3C to help define a true standard for interoperability. It's also why we contributed our work on the System Definition Model (SDM) to form the basis of SML. We are deeply committed to SML as a core technology to enable the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) across the full scope of our platform and management products and development tools. We look forward to working with our partners and the industry to help customers realize greater value from IT through SML."

— Kirill Tatarinov
Corporate Vice President
Windows and Enterprise Management Division
Microsoft Corp.

"Model-based management is proven technology for today's complex IT environments. SML provides a solid foundation for robust exchange of management information across the enterprise, leading to lower TCO and improved business agility. Sun views open industry standards as fundamental enablers of heterogeneous IT systems, and we're pleased to join forces at the W3C to move SML through the standards process, following which Sun will appropriately use SML technology within its product portfolio."

— Bill Smith
Director of Business Alliances
Sun Microsystems Inc.

[Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-22W3CSMLPR.mspx]

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See details in the news story: "Member Submission of Service Modeling Language (SML) Specification to W3C."

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BEA Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., CA, Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., EMC Corp., HP, IBM Corp., Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp., and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced they have submitted a specification to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for review as an industrywide standard. Called the Service Modeling Language (SML), the specification defines a consistent way to communicate how computer networks, applications, servers and other IT resources are described — or modeled — in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and can help businesses more seamlessly manage the services that are built on these resources. In addition to the base SML specification, a companion specification was submitted to the W3C. Called the SML Interchange Format (SML-IF), it defines how to exchange SML models between applications. With industry collaboration, SML enables a hierarchy of IT resource models to be created from reusable building blocks rather than requiring custom descriptions of every service, reducing costs and system complexity for customers. These blocks can be defined at the appropriate level of granularity for desired-state management. They include validation constraints that increase the reliability of integrations, opening the door to increased automation. If adopted as a standard, SML will address the industry problem of numerous methods representing the same IT resource. Currently, the use of different formats requires a translation process that can lead to the loss or misinterpretation of technical details. SML offers support for rich constraints and alignment with XML message exchange architectures — unique properties that make it well-suited for modeling IT resources and services. SML allows developers to build modeling information for applications, IT infrastructure and services that can be used during all stages of the resource life cycle, including deployment and configuration management and resource updating. They are also useful for tactical processes such as management of service levels, availability and capacity. To visit the member submission page go to: http://www.w3.org/Submission/2007/01 Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq 'MSFT') is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Quote Sheet "As an industry leader, BEA Systems is committed to working collaboratively to create and co-author standards like SML that enable interoperability and simplification of IT management systems. Given the W3C's support and success with XML standards, we are excited to have SML submitted to the W3C for standardization. With SML, BEA continues with our commitment to provide leadership in the development of W3C XML and Web services standards." — Zulah Eckert Senior Principal Technologist Office of the CTO BEA Systems Inc. "Business Service Management (BSM) advocates simplicity, efficiency and interoperability in managing the IT ecosystem. The submission of the SML language to W3C puts us one step closer to helping customers simplify the management of their IT environments, bringing them even closer to their BSM goals." — Tom Bishop Chief Technology Officer BMC Software Inc. "By promoting standardized modeling of complex IT services, SML will facilitate the management of those services — independent of the development technologies and platforms. CA plans to leverage SML in management solutions that will provide greater flexibility, more automated control and lower cost of ownership." — Edward Marootian Jr. Vice President of Product Management and Strategy Office of the CTO CA Inc. "Dell is committed to simplifying the management of IT resources so customers can focus on growing their business. SML is an essential piece of Dell's Unified Manageability Architecture that delivers a standards-based blueprint for simplified, modular systems management and enables a path to 'built-in' management for hardware and software that can yield more robust systems modeling, enabling high availability and standards-based building blocks for business process management." — Winston Bumpus Director, Systems Management Architecture and Standards Dell Product Group Dell Inc. "EMC believes that model-based management solutions represent the new path to successfully managing the highly complex, multidomain information infrastructures emerging in today's enterprises. The multivendor SML effort is an important building block and reflective of EMC's standards-driven strategy to ease heterogeneous product interoperability and management in customer environments. We look forward as W3C accelerates the adoption of this foundation technology." — Jeff Nick Senior Vice President and CTO EMC Corp. "HP believes that automation of IT management processes is a key enabler of Business Technology Optimization because it will help our customers improve IT delivery times, reduce costs and decrease the risks of human error. Automating these tasks will also help reduce the business risk of IT and give enterprises better visibility into the impact of planned or unplanned IT events. SML is an important technical building block toward such levels of automation." — William Vambenepe Distinguished Technologist HP Software "The submission of SML to W3C is an important milestone for bringing open frameworks into IT management solutions on behalf of our customers. As a leader in open standards-based software, this is an important step in IBM's effort to collaborate with other industry leaders to extend modeling and self-managing capabilities within multivendor IT environments." — Ric Telford Vice President Autonomic Computing IBM Corp. "Along with our fellow industry leaders, Intel believes SML is another step in providing enterprises with flexible management and innovative Web services. Using SML, a model-based management system can be built for critical production environments, helping ensure data centers of tomorrow are fully integrated, fully managed and fully scalable. These are mandatory principles from concept to provisioning and from operation to obsolescence." — Robert B. Crooke Vice President and General Manager Business Client Group Intel Corporation "Customers tell us they need solutions that that make it easier to integrate and manage end-to-end IT services in heterogeneous environments. That is why Microsoft is delighted to work with the industry and W3C to help define a true standard for interoperability. It's also why we contributed our work on the System Definition Model (SDM) to form the basis of SML. We are deeply committed to SML as a core technology to enable the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) across the full scope of our platform and management products and development tools. We look forward to working with our partners and the industry to help customers realize greater value from IT through SML." — Kirill Tatarinov Corporate Vice President Windows and Enterprise Management Division Microsoft Corp. "Model-based management is proven technology for today's complex IT environments. SML provides a solid foundation for robust exchange of management information across the enterprise, leading to lower TCO and improved business agility. Sun views open industry standards as fundamental enablers of heterogeneous IT systems, and we're pleased to join forces at the W3C to move SML through the standards process, following which Sun will appropriately use SML technology within its product portfolio." — Bill Smith Director of Business Alliances Sun Microsystems Inc. [Source: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/mar07/03-22W3CSMLPR.mspx] Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See details in the news story: "Member Submission of Service Modeling Language (SML) Specification to W3C."