DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on the development, validation and promotion of infrastructure management standards, announced its Network Management Initiative (NETMAN), which will lead the industry toward the unification of network management across traditional, cloud and software defined data center (SDDC) environments.

While cloud, virtualization and software defined networking have eased the use of network functions for consumers, the challenges of deploying and managing the network supporting these infrastructures have magnified. Addressing the current complexity and abstraction, DMTF’s NETMAN will provide the necessary standards-based management models and interfaces to enable consistent, unified and automated provisioning, deployment, configuration, and monitoring of network environments. The DMTF also believes that NETMAN could significantly benefit other related efforts such as the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) initiative (www.etsi.org/nfv).

Today’s existing and emerging network management standards do not attempt to integrate with server, virtualization and cloud management standards to simplify and unify the management of the overall infrastructure. Building upon the DMTF’s widely-deployed management standards, NETMAN is in the unique position to:

- Facilitate interoperable management across multiple network environments

- Enable a common management infrastructure for network resources and services that can span across multiple implementations, including open source solutions

- Deliver effective management of the network environment within new paradigms such as SDDC and NFV

“Multiple open source, proprietary and isolated management solutions for networks currently exist, but the lack of cohesion often increases the complexity and cost of development, rather than ease these burdens,” said DMTF Chair of the Board Winston Bumpus. “The DMTF’s NETMAN takes a holistic approach, using standard management interfaces, to facilitate interoperability. The result is integrated management in today’s real-world, heterogeneous network environments.”