Mass hysteria erupted in the blogosphere today, when two leading technology standards groups joined forces to issue a press release containing over 50 acronyms. WARNING: Read on at your own risk!

DMTF and UEFI Forum Work Together to Advance IT Standards

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PORTLAND, Ore. — Two leading technology standards groups have joined forces to help developers speed deployment of standards-based solutions for the end-to-end management of distributed enterprise computing. The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) and the UEFI Forum (UEFI) today announced a plan to align key technical specifications, thereby promoting interoperable management solutions to help lower costs and simplify operations in the data center.

DMTF is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards. The UEFI Forum is the leading industry group defining a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware as well as interoperability between independent firmware components. The DMTF-UEFI alliance is uniquely positioned to drive adoption of new technologies throughout the industry.

Under the agreement, the two organizations will collaborate to align UEFI and DMTF specifications to enable products based on UEFI standards to be managed with DMTF management technologies. The specifications for alignment include SMASH, DASH, CIM, SMBIOS from DMTF, and the UEFI and Platform Initialization (PI) specifications from the UEFI Forum. The work will focus on incorporating requirements for modeling UEFI-compliant firmware implementations into system and firmware models developed by the DMTF. The organizations expect to see developers of computer servers, desktops, laptops, and operating systems, along with computer management tool companies, to be the first adopters of the joint specification work.

“Our open industry standards are key to cross-platform management in distributed environments,” said Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. “We're pleased to work with the UEFI Forum to update DMTF specifications to work seamlessly together. This partnership will result in significant usability enhancements for end users to meet the needs of the marketplace.”

“Adoption of UEFI standards continues to gain momentum,” said Tony Pierce, president of the UEFI Forum, Inc. and technical evangelist, Microsoft Corporation. “The UEFI Forum brings together key companies for defining important cross-platform standardizations. This collaboration will help realize new levels of security, efficiency and platform management capabilities. This is the appropriate time for a working alliance with the DMTF.”

The UEFI Forum will participate in the following DMTF work groups: Desktop & Mobile, Server Management, CIM Core Schema and PreOS, as well as the SMBIOS Sub-team. The DMTF will participate in the UEFI Specification Work Group, the UEFI Configuration Sub-team and the UEFI Security Sub-team.

About UEFI and the UEFI Forum

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification defines a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a modern, well-defined environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

The Platform Initialization (PI) specification defines the model for components used and consumed by firmware. The specification defines firmware driver models for hardware components as well as expanding the capability of run-time firmware components.

The UEFI Forum is the group responsible for developing, managing and promoting the UEFI and PI specifications. The UEFI specification is the evolutionary successor to the EFI specification. EFI 1.10, published in 2002, was the final version of EFI. All enhancements beyond EFI 1.10 are contained in the UEFI specification. Further information about the UEFI specification and membership opportunities can be found at http://www.uefi.org.

The UEFI Forum continues to work closely with other industry groups, notably the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), on defining firmware security protocols.

About the DMTF

With more than 3,500 active participants representing 39 countries and nearly 200 organizations, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards. DMTF management technologies include the Common Diagnostic Model (CDM), Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) and Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) Initiatives, as well as Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) — including protocols such as CIM-XML and Web Services for Management (WS-Management) — which are all based on the Common Information Model (CIM). Information about DMTF technologies and activities can be found at www.dmtf.org.

 
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