Network and desktop management convergence

Network management and desktop management frequently employ different tools and technologies. This divorce may even be emphasized as massive quantities of very diverse elements ranging from resource-limited devices to large-scale distributed applications are expected in the Internet. The convergence of these different kinds of management approaches into a common framework is critical for the future development of the Internet and intranets-it would provide the ability to manage these increasingly spread and dissimilar elements, in order to permit management of the services that they collectively provide. The paper discusses the advantages, disadvantages and points of convergence of management frameworks, and presents an integration solution based on emerging standards (CIM/XML) that allows, beyond that convergence, an easy migration to the recent worldwide user interface (the Web browser).