Recently Microsoft and few other companies announced WS-Management, a specification for managing devices and computers using Web Services. This specification seems to be in direct competition with WSDM, a specification being developed by an OASIS TC. It is interesting to see Dell and Sun supporting both the specifications. Management heavy-weights HP, IBM and CA are all behind WSDM. Full disclosure: I work for HP and have been a coauthor of an early contribution to WSDM-TC.
Admittedly, WS-Management covers only a small part of what WSDM is attempting to address -- that small part being how to identify a manageable resource and communicate with it. WSDM has two sub specs -- one for Management Using Web Services (MUWS) and another for Management Of Web Services (MOWS). The overlapping areas are all within MUWS. However, it has additional stuff for accessing properties of manageable resources, metrics, managing their state and specifying relationships. These capabilities are also collectively known as the management model.
As someone who has worked in the area of management for few years now, I think the support for state management, metrics, properties and relationships in any management specification is a must if we want generic managers. Of course, there are many different ways of supporting these capabilities. WSDM has adopted WS-Resource Framework. Surprisingly, WS-Management is silent on this. However, this omission may be its biggest strength. DMTF, a well known management standards body, has worked over the years to specify the base technologies for specifying the model of any managed system. It will be much simpler for DMTF to adopt WS-Management as the management protocol in place of CIM operations over HTTP, retaining CIM as the technology to specify management models. Mapping of CIM constructs to WSDM is going to be much more trickier.