Introduction

Last month, the first installment of The Autonomic computing edge examined the adoption of autonomic computing in Japan. This second installment discusses standards for autonomic computing technology -- not just what they are, but why they're relevant.

The Autonomic computing edge continues to strive to bring you some of the leading-edge topics surrounding autonomic computing technology in a straightforward and concise manner, presenting the facts, but also edging into some opinions.

This article discusses the role of standards in autonomic computing technology. Because the technology is all about the broad deployment of autonomic management functions throughout heterogeneous information technology infrastructures, it is critical that autonomic computing architecture be built on a standard architectural foundation.

The autonomic computing architecture at IBM describes such a foundation, but IBM recognizes that broad industry adoption is facilitated with open industry standards. Therefore, IBM, historically a promoter of open standards, is actively involved in standardizing many aspects, such as interfaces, protocols, and taxonomies, of the technical foundation for autonomic computing.

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What's a standard?

Starting with the denotation of standard, the most fitting definition I found at my favorite online dictionary is: "Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence." (See Resources to link to my favorite online dictionary.)

In the information technology industry, standard often is viewed as the alternative to proprietary. Because proprietary often denotes an implementation by a narrow set of providers (often a single company), many information technology customers view standards-based solutions as the preferred alternative because they do not want to become "locked in" to a particular vendor's proprietary solutions. A perceived value of standards is that they enable many vendors to provide solutions, all compliant with the standard, so the customer has a choice among offerings. From an autonomic management perspective, this choice means that products and offerings, purchased from one set of suppliers, will be interoperable with management software purchased from others. This allows the customer to find optimum solutions for their environment, with assurance that the heterogeneous mix is interoperable.

Many successful solutions in the information technology industry are based on standards. The Internet and Worldwide Web are two obvious examples, both built on a host of protocols and content formats standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), respectively.

These well-known standards and standards bodies, though, are just the tip of the iceberg. The United States government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) notes:

"Standards are essential elements of information technology-hardware, software, and networks. Standard interfaces, for example, permit disparate devices and applications to communicate and work together. Standards also underpin computer security and information privacy, and they are critical to realizing many widespread benefits that advances in electronic and mobile commerce are anticipated to deliver."

Although several well-known information technology standards bodies exist, it is difficult to count the number of standards bodies in this area because many different organizations come and go over time and there are multiple types of standards and ways to develop them, as described next.

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Developing standards

True (de jure, literally "by right") standards are those that most people are likely to equate with standards. True standards are produced by bodies that have assumed authority to issue standards. This authority might come from government, international agreements, industry agreements, accreditation, or other sources, but it is widely acknowledged that the organization has the authority to issue standards within its domain. Standards organizations that fit the de jure model include the IETF and W3C, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and IEEE Standards Association.

De jure standards are important to the information technology industry, but a great deal of what is standardized in this field is a result of de facto standardization. De facto (literally, "by fact") standards are those that have become widely used even though they are not true standards. The delineation between de jure and de facto standards is sometimes subjective; a primary distinction used here is a "recognized authority" to issue standards. Many de facto standards have wide industry acceptance and represent significant investment by companies; therefore, they might be considered by some to be de jure standards.

One point of this discussion is that a standard really boils down to an agreement among parties to do something in a common way, and there are various ways to organize the interested parties to produce standards. There are also various forms that the resulting standards can take. Standards can be developed by accredited bodies, consortia, special interest groups, or other organizations and might take the form of specifications, best practices, open source projects, reference implementations, or other realizations. In general, the standards that address an important facet of the industry and have the backing of a significant set of industry players will rise to the top in terms of visibility and significance.

For autonomic computing technology, many relevant standards and their associated standards organizations are described in "An Architectural Blueprint for Autonomic Computing" (see Resources). Next, I examine selected autonomic standards in more detail.

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Existing standards

Although many standards apply when developing products that have autonomic capabilities, some of the more visible existing and developing standards especially related to autonomic computing are:

• From the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF):
• Common Information Model (CIM)
• Web Services Common Information Model (WS-CIM)
• Applications Working Group
• Utility Computing Working Group
• Server Management Working Group

In general, the preceding standards and working groups relate to describing manageable resources.

• Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS):
• Web Services Security (WS-Security)
• Web Services Distributed Management (WS-DM)
• Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF)
• Web Services Notification (WS-N)

These standards relate to management of Web services and management using Web services and are an important basis and model for autonomic computing technology. The following sections present more details on these OASIS standards, especially WS-DM.

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New and emerging standards

One major area of active standardization related to autonomic computing is the management standards being produced by the WS-DM technical committee in OASIS. These standards focus on management of Web services and management using Web services. Although implementations of the autonomic computing architecture are not limited to Web services, the diversity of management technologies that already exist lead to the use of Web services as an exemplary form of interfaces for system management. Therefore, the WS-DM standard, recently announced and approved by OASIS (more on this in the next section) plays a large role in system management and, therefore, is key to autonomic computing technology.

Figure 1 shows a general mapping of various standards to the autonomic manager architecture detailed in "An Architectural Blueprint for Autonomic Computing". The figure is illustrative; it is not intended to precisely map a particular standard to a single precise part of an autonomic manager, but rather to illustrate how autonomic interfaces and functions correspond to various standards. The list of standards in Figure 1 is not exhaustive.

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Recent events

The WSDM standards just mentioned were recently completed and approved by OASIS. On March 9, 2005, OASIS announced the approval of WS-DM 1.0. According to that announcement:

"OASIS, the international e-business standards consortium, today announced that its members have approved Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. WSDM enables management applications to be built using Web services, allowing resources to be controlled by many managers through a single interface. ... "WSDM offers a key to solving a long standing pain point for resource providers, management software vendors, and their customers," said Heather Kreger of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSDM Technical Committee. "By integrating heterogeneous resources into heterogeneous management software using heterogeneous protocols and platforms, WSDM uses Web services to start solving the management integration problem."

My colleague, Thomas Studwell, the technical lead for autonomic computing standards at IBM, also notes that, "WS-DM is important in several respects. First, virtually every leading systems management software supplier participated in this committee, assuring broad industry support. This standard provides a necessary management interface for a technology [Web services] that is vital to today's business. Finally, WS-DM allows systems management platforms to take advantage of the tremendous power offered by the service-oriented architecture of Web services, thereby taking a significant step toward integration of management technologies, just as Web services has proven for business applications."

IBM is an active leader in the OASIS WS-DM technical committee and has made contributions to the WS-DM standard that was recently announced, notably IBM's Common Base Event, which was the basis for the WS-DM Event Format that is incorporated in the WS-DM 1.0 specifications.

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Conclusions

Standards are critical to the broad adoption of autonomic computing technology. As illustrated by the recent OASIS announcement of the WS-DM 1.0 standard, IBM is active in developing and promoting open standards for autonomic computing. The approval of the WS-DM standard is a significant milestone for system management in heterogeneous environments.

Many standards are at play in the information technology industry and many are relevant for autonomic computing technology. Several such standards were presented here, along with background and rationale for using existing and developing new standards for autonomic computing architecture. As autonomic computing technology continues its ascent, it will do so on a foundation of open standards.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my IBM colleagues Thomas Studwell, Autonomic Computing Senior Technical Staff Member and Heather Kreger, Emerging Technologies Senior Technical Staff Member. Tom and Heather both worked diligently in the OASIS WS-DM technical committee (which Heather co-chairs) to help produce the WS-DM 1.0 standard. Some of the material in this article comes from information that Tom generated, and the standards work that both individuals do so well makes for a topic that's worth writing about.

Resources

• The paper An Architectural Blueprint for Autonomic Computing provides an overview of the autonomic computing architecture.
  
  
• My favorite online dictionary is dictionary.com (Lexico Publishing Group, LLC)
  
  
• The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a community of network professionals concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.
  
  
• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologiesto get the Web to its full potential.
  
  
• Get information about the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which helps industry groups as they develop IT standards.
  
  
• Get information about the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
  
  
• Get information about the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association
  
  
• Get information about the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
  
  
• Get information about the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
  
  
• The OASIS news release Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Approved as OASIS Standard offers information about the recently approved OASIS WSDM standard.
  
  

About the author

Brent A. Miller is a member of IBM’s Autonomic Computing Architecture team, where he serves as the lead architect for self-healing. He has worked for IBM for 21 years, with assignments including printer development, mobile clients, mobile software and pervasive computing.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• What's a standard?
• Developing standards
• Existing standards
• New and emerging standards
• Recent events
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• Resources
• About the author
• Comments