[public-xg-usdl] <none>

Hi All,
I have had on my list for some time now to email the group some information and perspectives from IT management point of view.  Finally cleared a few days on my calendar to concentrate on this and my book chapter...
First, some background.  CA Technologies is in the system management encompassing system monitoring, automation, security, and a host of other domains..  We are investing very heavily in the cloud space across all of our domains.  One of the most important new developments from CA is what we call Cloud Commons and the Service Measurement Index or SMI.
You can read all about it at: http://www.cloudcommons.com/servicemeasurementindex/-/asset_publisher/M69c/content/how-smi-scores-are-calculated-and-what-they-mean?redirect=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cloudcommons.com%2fservicemeasurementindex%3fp_p_id%3d101_INSTANCE_M69c%26p_p_lifecycle%3d0%26p_p_state%3dnormal%26p_p_mode%3dview%26p_p_col_id%3dcolumn-2%26p_p_col_count%3d1
The Clould Service Measurement Initiative Consortium, lead by Carnegie Mellon University in Silicon Valley has taken ownership of this proposed standard so it is not unique to CA.
So what is SMI?  It is a set of business-relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) that provides a standardized method for measuring and comparing business services.  It looks at things like performance, reliability, cost, and other quality metrics to provide an overall rating of the service so that two similar services can be compared.
The inputs to Cloud Commons SMI is observed, either human or machine, KPI data that is entered by the community.  The idea is to replicate for cloudl service ratings what Amazon has done for rating products on its website.  Over time, let the community coalese around an opinion of a service based on real-world observations.
The community can then go to Cloud Commons and look at community ratings to decide which of  set of "similar" servcies best suites their needs for a particular purpose.
And that is the rub; that word "similar".  I have complained for some time that we are focused on grading two services, say A and B, to compare their fitness for a particular business purpose based on observations of IT metrics, but we have not addressed the the upfront problem of determining if A and B are functionally "similar".
We have tended to gloss over that question and focus on what we do well which is monitoring and measuring IT metrics.
After complaining about this problem for some time internally to CA, I was asked by our CTO to join the USDL effort to help work towards a solution.
I am going to be focused on providing feedback to this team on the comparability aspects of services defined in USDL.  This is related to searching which is already identified as an important aspect of USDL.
Ideally, i would like to come up with a way to augment the SMI score with a something like a Service Equivalency Index that can advise the consumer of how similar two services are.  
I hope this provides some context and a complimentary point of view to the group.  My availability to focus on this effort varies greatly from week to week, so I probably won't be as consistent as I would like, but I'm always monitoring the effort and happy to hear your feedback to the ideas above.
Regards,
Ken Blackwell
VP & Chief Archtiect
Service Assurance Business Unit
CA Technologies
+1 (203) 733-5381