The DMTF was formed in May of 1992 as a cooperative effort of eight companies: Digital Equipment CorporationTM, Hewlett-PackardTM, IBMTM, IntelTM, MicrosoftTM, NovellTM, SunTM, and SynOpticsTM. The objective of the DMTF was to provide a simple solution for desktop manageability.
The DTMF created a standard interface that handles communication between any management application and all the manageable products on -- or attached to -- a desktop PC or server.
This standard is called the DMI. For more information on the DMI, refer to the DMI Specification Version 2.0 at http://www.dmtf.org
The DMI is:
Independent of any specific operating system, hardware platform, or management protocol
Easy for vendors to adopt
Scalable, to accommodate a wide range of products from very simple to very complex and extensible
Mappable to existing management and remote protocols