Web Services in Your IDC

By Doug Kaye

From Web Hosting Monthly, December 2003 Edition

December 18, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- "In the future, the management of the data center will move from managing boxes to managing services." So said Sun Software's CTO, John Fowler in an interview published earlier this year on the SearchWebServices.com Web site. Fowler was referring to customer applications as well as the generic components of Web hosting and managed services.

Although most of the hype surrounding Web services is focused on e-commerce, Web services are also finding their way into other less glamorous infrastructure applications. As we move into 2004, don't be surprised to see Web services becoming an important, if not yet highly visible, technology in your own data centers

In addition to some of your customers' applications being based on Web services, you'll begin using many of the same technologies (XML, XML/RPC, and SOAP) to manage your internal systems. The first two standards for doing so have already appeared. An OASIS technical committee has begun work on the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) protocol. That's a big name for something relatively simple: a common data format for logging. WSDM includes a definition of a Common Base Event (CBE) representation in XML. The CBE format will be used to communicate logging, management and problem determination events within the data center. The OASIS committee membership roster includes representatives from IBM, Cisco, BEA, BMC, Oracle, and Sun - in other words, the folks who make the most important boxes and software in your data centers. Although it may not sound too exciting, just imagine how much easier your data center management would be if every device and service u! sed a compatible log-file format. The initial draft of WSDM is expected to be completed in early 2004, and I predict you'll see implementations before the end of the year.

Another newly hatched specification is for the Data Center Markup Language (DCML). This one has a rather different heritage, coming from Computer Associates, EDS, and Opsware, the governing members of the DMCL Organization. DCML's purpose is to specify the interaction of systems in a "utility computing" architecture. It supports the management of inventory, component relationships, provisioning, policies and processes. Using DCML, companies will have a standardized method for data center automation, utility computing and system management. Well, that's the theory, at least. As good as it sounds, the DCML Organization has already taken some flak for not having among its members those companies that create the systems DMCL intends to manage. While management-software vendors such as BMC and Mercury are on the list, notably absent are Cisco, Sun, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Dell, just to name a few obvious players. Furthermore, the specification has yet to be submitte! d to a major standards organization such as the W3C or OASIS. This group and its specifications are worth keeping an eye on, but DMCL may not be an important specification until the big boys are on board. Even then, it will be another year until you should expect to feel any impact unless you're a CA, EDS, or Opsware customer.

We're just now beginning the first of John Fowler's three stages of Web services deployment in data centers: using Web services as management interfaces. In his next stage, we'll see the arrival of standardized systems for describing the data center and its services and infrastructure: identity systems, directories, and portals. Eventually, according to Fowler, we'll have the ability to change the data center on an as-needed basis; in other words, the dream of dynamic utility computing. Look for these three phases to appear in 2004, 2005, and 2007, respectively.