Fujitsu, IBM to team on network standards

Fujitsu said on Tuesday that it plans to join IBM in promoting standards for automating the administration of corporate networks. The two companies said they will back a standard proposal called Web Services Distributed Management Event Format, which provides a common way of reporting network events, such as a failed server or a drop in application performance.

The original event-reporting format was developed by IBM as part of its autonomic computing initiative, which brought together a number of technologies for making computers more able to manage themselves. The specification was submitted to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a standards group. Fujitsu and IBM have also started drafting technical specifications, which they intend to propose as industry standards, for managing networks with equipment from different suppliers.