Cloud Computing Firms: Yes to Open Standards

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Several companies today announced the release of a new cloud standard,
the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Federation specification
(CMDBf), created by the non-profit Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
(a PDF version of the standard is available here).

CMDBs give IT organizations complete visibility into the attributes, relationships, and dependencies of the components in their enterprise computing environments. The federation standard provides a way for accessing IT information in CMDBs distributed across multiple repositories to create a more complete and accurate view of IT information spread out across multiple data sources.

“Every day, our customers ask CA for help implementing CMDBs that
federate asset and configuration data from both CA and non-CA systems.
Without extensive federation, configuration management is so complicated and
enterprises are forced to restrict the scope of their CMDBs projects and
limit the realization of their potential value,” said Brian Bell, senior vice president for service management at CA (NYSE: CA) in a statement.

Marv Waschke, senior advisor for product management at CA, said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com “The service model stored in the CMDB holds all the tangible and
intangible IT infrastructure items that support the service and the
relationships that exist amongst them.”

For those using ITIL (define) as a framework to manage IT, the CMDBf can help
track Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM) data.

“How do you build a service model, when some or all of the information about the underlying components are stored in radically different data sources? After the model is built, how is it kept current? Until an organization can address this problem, SACM is daunting.
The CMDBf focuses on a standards based approach to data access in support of
your SACM,” Waschke said.

Others are also working on better CMDBs. Last week, BMC Software (NYSE: BMC) highlighted the importance of CMDBs with the release of its Business Service Management platform.

A CMDB can help predict cloud usage, Meghan Stebler, BMC Software
principal of strategic marketing, told InternetNews.com in an e-mail.
“Knowing what you have and how it is being used is the first step. Using a
CMDB to manage assets and store information (even federated) allows for the
initial baseline analysis of where you are today,” Stebler said.

Also last week, Web host Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) announced an open,
standards-based API for The Rackspace Cloud. The API can deliver data about
a VM instance, relate files to it to create a server, ensure that a
customer’s VMs don’t congregate on one physical host, and create shared IP
groups to ensure high availability, the company said.

“Cloud Servers has access to local, RAID10 disk storage, much like you
would expect in a physical server,” Emil Sayegh, general manager of The
Rackspace Cloud, said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. “The
Rackspace Cloud is also the only services suite where you can get cloud or
dedicated hosting options or our unique hybrid hosting offering.”

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com.