It’s been a busy 2015 for the DMTF. President Jeff Hilland offers a mid-year update on the important work taking place within the organization.
Q: You attended China Cloud Computing Conference again this year as a keynote speaker. Describe that experience and how it is relevant to the progress within the DMTF Regional Chapter Committee (RCC).
A: I was once again honored with the opportunity to represent the DMTF’s global standards effort at International Cloud Computing Standardization Forum. This event presented a unique opportunity to engage with an international audience that sees the importance of cloud computing standards. The event was extremely well attended by a group of people eager to embrace DMTF’s and other global standardization efforts. What this tells us is that there are several opportunities available for the RCC to extend its reach into new locales. The enthusiasm, support and progress of the DMTF China Chapter demonstrates the interest of cloud computing standards in China, as exhibited by the DMTF Chinese web portal debuting at the conference. It also validates the importance of promotion and publicity of DMTF standards as they continue to gain greater international recognition and adoption.
Q: The Redfish 1.0 standard was released earlier this month, what does this mean to DMTF members?
A: The Scalable Platform Management Forum (SPMF) was formed in October of 2014 to create and publish an open industry standard specification and schema that meets the expectations of end users for simple, modern and secure management of scalable platform hardware. Within weeks, the Forum released its first set of work in progress deliverables. In early August Redfish 1.0 was released, which in the standards world, is quite remarkable. This included not only specifications and schemas, but mockups of data and a state-of-the-art model browser to help speed development.
This tells members that the DMTF remains the ideal forum for industry leading companies to come together in a non-competitive environment to collaborate on relevant interoperable management standards; that our efforts to lower process overhead and increase agility have truly paid off in the form of this standard and many more to come. The DMTF has listened to our members and their customers to develop this standard that leverages the modern tool set that customers already use in their environments helping to make it easier to develop and use than its predecessors.
Q: Nearly a year into the Structural and Procedural Reorganization of the DMTF, how is the new structure benefitting the organization?
A: The implementation of DMTF’s reorganization has optimized procedures for swift publication. We have fostered and encouraged even greater transparency, with groups publishing Works In Progress early and often so the organization’s progress can be better followed; allowing more opportunities for feedback and ultimately making our standards that much more relevant to the demands of the end user. We have enabled efforts to use the tool sets that help make standards development faster and stream lined our processes to adapt to requirements while still preserving the value of membership.
