A proposed standard to enable integration, automation and better management of data center components this week will begin development under the direction of a new standards body - the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.

OASIS this week announced it will take over the development of the Data Center Markup Language (DCML) Framework Specification 1.0.

DCML saw its beginnings last fall when supporters - including vendors such as BMC Software, Electronic Data Systems, Mercury Interactive and Opsware - launched an initiative to enable data center elements to more quickly integrate and more easily communicate with one another. The company announced Version 1.0 of the specification at CA World this spring.

Using the XML-based specification, software would provide an inventory of data center elements, describe how those pieces interoperate and define the various policies that bind them together. The specification encompasses a range of data center components, from servers to network gear and from applications to infrastructure software.

Vendors would provide data center managers with modeling tools to create a DCML document describing a particular data center. The document then would be entered into a provisioning and configuration tool to "build" a fully configured data center environment. As a descriptive language, DCML could be used to create a data center blueprint defining every element that must be configured and provisioned to re-create the environment automatically.

The DCML organization itself garnered the support of more than 40 vendors, but companies such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems didn't sign on, causing industry experts to speculate on the standard's future. But under OASIS' direction, DCML will benefit from more than 3,000 participants representing more than 600 organizations and individual members across 100 countries.

"Transitioning the DCML Organization to OASIS marks the next significant milestone in the development of the specification and promises to further accelerate its adoption amongst organizations worldwide," says Computer Associates' Louis Blatt, president of the DCML Organization.

The OASIS DCML Member Section will be managed by a steering committee made up of the current DCML board of directors, which includes CA's Blatt, EDS' Darrel Thomas and Sharmila Shahani of Opsware.