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The DMTF was founded in 1992 by a group of vendors, including Digital Equipment Corporation (now Compaq), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Novell. The DMTF changed its name from "Desktop Management Task Force" to "Distributed Management Task Force" in May of 1999.

The goal of the DMTF is to deliver management standards and initiatives for desktop, enterprise, and Internet environments. The DMTF manages the following initiatives and standards:

• DMI (Distributed Management Interface)    A common management framework for desktop systems. See "DMI (Distributed Management Interface)."


• CIM (Common Information Model)    An object-oriented specification for collecting and sharing enterprise-wide management information. CIM has rapidly become the leading management information model.


• WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management)    An initiative that uses Web technologies to manage systems. Web browsers are used as management interfaces, CIM is the inventory model, and XML is the data interchange format.


• DEN (Directory Enabled Networks)    An initiative to develop standard directory schema and interoperable directory services. Through DEN, managers use directory services to manage network services such as QoS, network addressing, and network policies.

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