By Elisabeth Horwitt
Network World, 4/14/97

One of the problems in building a truly integrated network and systems management utility is the lack of standards to enable tools to communicate with one another. Or, some would say, the problem is there are too many standards.

The Common Information Model (CIM), due out this month, promises to address that issue by consolidating multiple standards or at least providing interoperability among tools adhering to different standards. It looks good on paper, but given the raft of management standards efforts that have come and gone before it, users and analysts aren't expressing a lot of confidence in CIM.

The standards CIM is intended to encompass include the following:

• Java Management API, proposed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. as a more interactive, dynamic interface between Web clients and various management tools and platforms.
• Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), a proposal from a Microsoft Corp.-led group to standardize how management data is represented, manipulated and accessed via a Web browser. WBEM is an attempt to integrate existing standards, including the Desktop Management Interface, SNMP and HTTP.
• Parts of the IBM/Tivoli Systems, Inc.'s Application Management Specification (AMS).

A full roster of industry leaders worked on CIM, under the auspices of the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF), and have committed to implementing the standard. They include Microsoft, Tivoli, Sun, Novell, Inc., Netscape Communications Corp. and Intel Corp., to name a few.

And yet seasoned standards watchers remain cynical about the ultimate success of CIM.

The standard's ''goals are quite high and lofty, and perhaps unattainable,'' says Jeff Case, president of SNMP Research, Inc., a net management software company in Knoxville, Tenn. ''When you claim to integrate a lot of existing standards, you generally end up adding one more to be integrated.''

Another likely scenario is that some major vendors will ''only implement that piece of the standard that is convenient for them, as Microsoft did with [the DMTF's] Desktop Management Interface,'' says David Spinelli, a manager for Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group's global network service line.

''Vendors tend to pursue the 80/20 rule,'' Case agrees. ''Implement 20% of the pieces of a standard that address 80% of the problem.''