EDS and Opsware launched the Data Centre Markup Language (DCML) at an event in Boston, with several technology companies announcing support for the open standards effort.

DCML was created to empower companies with the most detailed, accurate and up-to-date information by managing the complexity associated with data centre environments. DCML aims to facilitate the exchange of vital information between key data centre components, and to establish a foundation to enable industry-wide utility computing.

"The market has been demanding solutions that deliver on utility computing's promises of flexibility, scalability, agility and cost savings," says Jeff Kelly, vice-president of EDS Infrastructure Services.

"Until now, the industry could only provide disconnected pieces of the solution. It is not enough to build a utility infrastructure and deliver utility-like services to your clients. Getting to the real value-add potential of utility computing requires a common, open data centre language to bring together all the moving parts. "

According to Kelly, DCML helps maximise the value of utility investments by enabling the migration and consolidation of all data centre application, server, software and hardware components, as well as providing a common language through which these components can communicate with one another.

DCML reduces the cost and time required for data centre build-out, consolidation, migration and environment replication, enabling enterprises to implement and upgrade management systems more quickly and easily. DCML also dramatically reduces disaster recovery time by capturing critical configuration information and providing detailed instructions on how to reconstruct the data centre environment, concludes Kelly.