DMTF Releases OVF 1.0 Standard

PORTLAND, Ore. - March 23, 2009 - The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the industry organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced the release of version 1.0 of its Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard. The updated standard extends DMTF's mission to enable interoperability through the creation of systems management standards for virtualized environments.

"The goal of standards development is to enable Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to offer improved products that manage a broader range of their customers' preferred technology platforms," said Cameron Haight, Research Vice President with Gartner. "This is because standards, when designed appropriately, not only prevent ISVs from having to create multiple versions of the same product for each possible environment, but they allow vendors to focus their scare development resources upon delivering higher value features."

As part of the DMTF Virtualization Management Initiative (VMAN), OVF simplifies interoperability, security and virtual machine lifecycle management by describing an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for the packaging and distribution of one or more virtual appliances and applications. This enables software developers to ship pre-configured, ready-to-deploy solutions, allowing end-users to distribute applications into their environments with minimal effort. The standard can also serve as a building block for cloud computing.

Key benefits of the OVF standard include:

• Portable virtual machine (VM) packaging
• Optimization for secure distribution
• Simplified installation and deployment
• Support for both single VM and multi-VM configurations
• Vendor and platform independent
• Extensible
• Localizable

"OVF is the first standard to enable interoperability within virtualized environments, offering customers virtualization platform independence and flexibility," said Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. "The delivery of the 1.0 standard is an indication of DMTF's continued commitment to driving standardization of IT management systems."

DMTF standards on our public web site are available to the industry at no charge. The OVF specification can be downloaded here along with sample demonstrations of the technology from DMTF member companies.

To accompany OVF, DMTF has completed a white paper describing the basic components of the standard and its reason for development. DMTF is committed to promoting the adoption of its management standards. The OVF white paper serves as an educational resource for implementers seeking interoperable solutions for their virtual systems.

About DMTF
DMTF enables more effective management of millions of IT systems worldwide by bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on the development, validation and promotion of systems management standards. The group spans the industry with 160 member companies and organizations, and more than 4,000 active participants crossing 43 countries. The DMTF board of directors is led by 16 innovative, industry-leading technology companies. They include Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); Broadcom Corporation; CA; Dell; EMC; Fujitsu; HP; Hitachi, Ltd.; IBM; Intel Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; Novell; Oracle; Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Symantec and VMware. With this deep and broad reach, DMTF creates standards that enable interoperable IT management. DMTF management standards are critical to enabling management interoperability among multi-vendor systems, tools and solutions within the enterprise. Information about DMTF technologies and activities can be found at http://www.dmtf.org.