AMD, Dell, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. today announced the publication of Web Services Management (WS-Management), a Web services specification that addresses the cost and complexity of IT management by providing a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across their entire IT systems.

By using Web services to manage IT systems, deployments that support WS-Management will enable IT managers to remotely access devices on their networks, regardless of whether the systems are just out of the box, powered down or otherwise unavailable. Further, WS-Management supports a full spectrum of usage scenarios. These include the management of everything from silicon components and handheld devices to PCs, servers and large-scale datacenters. WS-Management provides a valuable foundation for the next generation of management applications because of the breadth of functionality it supports combined with its ability to take advantage of the rich security, reliability and transactional features of WS-*, the Web services architecture.