OASIS looks at Web services management

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) plans to work with other standards organizations to define a standard way of using Web services architecture and technology for managing distributed resources, OASIS announced on Monday.

The newly formed OASIS Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Technical committee plans to work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) as well as with other OASIS security and Web services concerns. OASIS will align its work with similar efforts at the other organizations.

“I think this is significant in that this new technical committee is going to focus on Web services, not only management using Web services but the management of Web services [themselves],” said Winston Bumpus, chairman of the committee and director of standards at Novell.

The committee plans to base its work on the DMTF CIM (Common Information Model) and expand that model to include Web services, Bumpus said. The OASIS WSDM 1.0 specification is targeted for completion in January 2004.

The new OASIS committee replaces the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, which did not cover management of Web services.

Among the participants in the WSDM committee are BMC Software, Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Novell, Sun Microsystems, and webMethods.

Microsoft thus far is not participating in the new committee although it did serve on the predecessor management protocol technical committee, Bumpus said.

“I’m anticipating they’ll join,” he said. But a Microsoft spokesperson afterward released a statement that the company would not be participating, without giving a reason.

“Although Web services management is important, along with taking a broader look at the entire model of management, Microsoft has decided not to join the technical committee at this time,” Microsoft said in a prepared statement.

The WSDM committee’s first meeting is on April 2, Bumpus said.