The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) says the Open Virtualization Format 1.0 (OVF), developed by Dell, HP, VMware, XenSource, Microsoft and IBM for packaging and distribution a virtual appliance, is now officially a standard.

It’s part of a new DMTF Virtualization Management Initiative (VMAN) that’s meant to reduce pain points.

Based on OVF, VMAN will add standards for managing pre-installed, pre-configured solutions through their lifecycle. In other words, deploy, discover, monitor and manage virtual systems and create, modify and delete virtual resources.

It will leverage existing standards like DMFT’s Common Information Model (CIM) and the CIM-based Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) widgetry.