The Dynamic Systems Initiative, or DSI, is a Microsoft and industry strategy intended to enhance the Windows platform, delivering a coordinated set of solutions that simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy, and operate their distributed systems. Using DSI helps IT and software developers create operationally aware platforms. By designing systems that are more manageable and automating operations, organizations can reduce costs and proactively address their priorities.

DSI is about building software that enables knowledge of an IT system to be created, modified, transferred, and operated on throughout the life cycle of that system. It is a commitment from Microsoft and its partners to help IT teams capture and use knowledge to design systems that are more manageable and to automate operations, which in turn reduces costs and gives organizations additional time to focus proactively on what is most important.

By innovating across applications, development tools, the platform, and management solutions, DSI will result in

• Increased productivity and reduced costs across all aspects of IT
• Increased responsiveness to changing business needs
• Reduced time and effort required to develop, deploy, and manage applications

Microsoft is positioning DSI as the connector of the entire system life cycle.

DSI focuses on automating data-center operational jobs and reducing associated labor through self-managing systems. We can look at several examples where Microsoft products and tools integrate with DSI:

• Operations Manager uses the application knowledge captured in management packs to simplify identifying issues and their root causes, facilitating resolution and restoring services or preventing potential outages, and providing intelligent management at the system level. OpsMgr 2007 is a key component of DSI.
• Visual Studio is a model-based development tool that leverages the Service Modeling Language (SML), enabling operations managers and application architects to collaborate early in the development phase and ensure systems are defined with operational requirements in mind.
• WSUS provides greater and more efficient administrative control through modeling technology that enables downstream systems to construct accurate models representing their current state, available updates, and installed software.

More on DSI to follow ...