Company representative chairs new OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee

PROVO, Utah - Aug. 15, 2002 - Novell is working to add better management to Web services. Bringing its established expertise in network management, the company is leading a new effort within the OASIS standards body to develop an XML-based management protocol specification. Winston Bumpus, Novell's director of standards, is chairing the new OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee.

The effort, which is designed to facilitate distributed systems management over the Internet, will enable companies to not only manage their own services, but also oversee the interaction of those services with the services offered by other companies. In addition, the work will help consolidate and deliver an industry-standard protocol for managing desktops, services and networks across an enterprise or Internet environment. The group is reviewing a number of Web services standards and operations for potential use in the management protocol, including XML, SOAP, Open Model Interface (OMI) and the Distributed Management Task Force's Common Information Model (CIM).

As chair of the OASIS technical committee, Winston Bumpus, who is also president of the Distributed Management Task Force, is responsible for overseeing the standards developed by the group. Bumpus believes the initiative will help level the playing field and allow for management of systems regardless of the platform used.

"The widespread need for the integration of systems and network management tools is causing the industry to take a more holistic approach to the management of networks - and Web services provide a great vehicle for making that happen," Bumpus said. "This new OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee will not only develop the open standard management protocols needed to effectively leverage Web services technology and operations, but it will also serve as an important platform for advancing the holistic approach to network management."

For more information about the OASIS Management Protocol Technical Committee, go to www.oasis-open.org/committees/mgmtprotocol.

Some of the additional industry standards bodies in which Novell is currently involved include the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Open Group, the Liberty Alliance Project, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the School Interoperability Framework (SIF), and the Software and Industry Information Association (SIIA).

Press contacts:
Shawn Dickerson
Novell, Inc.
Phone: 801-861-2932
E-mail: sdickerson@novell.com