Industry backs XML spec for IT management

Web specs come and go, but it's not often that you see a laundry list of industry heavyweights getting behind a spec for IT management. But that's exactly what's brewing: Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Sun and others are throwing their collective weight behind the Service Modeling Language, or SML--a W3C-authored XML spec that's designed to help IT departments track machines and services on the corporate network. Here's how it works: IT managers use chunks of XML data to build a schema of their network and since that data is standardized through SML, third-party developers can provide the user with any number of tools to aid in managing that data. What's more, the companies involved have been kind enough to grant the W3C "perpetual, nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license" to the spec, meaning that it should remain nice and open for the conceivable future.

For more in-depth info on how the SML spec works:
- see this Ars Technica article