Book excerpt: Applications for Distributed Systems and Network Management Kornel Terplan and Jill Huntington-Lee The comprehensive, single source guide for tackling today's most critical network and systems management challenges Includes detailed product assessments from such market leaders as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and more. Now network administrators and MIS pros can downsize their firm's enterprise computing environment and work smarter with fewer staffing resources. This highly usable guide delivers clear, objective guidance for defining and quantifying your distributed management requirements. And it supplies the tactical guidance you need to apply commercially available network management products to ease the transition to rightsized networks, client/server structures, and open distributed systems. Need help reengineering key management processes for a distributed computing environment? Want to know what management integration alternatives are currently available? How to embed products from IBM and Hewlett-Packard into customized solutions? Are expert systems worth the cost? Applications for Distributed Systems and Network Management highlights today's three best technological management models for downsized, distributed networks. Then, page after page, it shows what applications are available now and which NMP-, DOS/Windows-, or UNIX-based management platforms they support, and shares application integration case studies that help you anticipate and blast through the barriers for achieving integrated management of client/server structures. Discover: * How to select the right management platform -- with data on various alarm facilities, presentation capabilities, and application programming interfaces and process-specific applications for trouble-ticketing, cable management, traffic monitoring, and data analysis. * Solutions to such hot management problems as remote configuration of routers, software distribution, fault isolation, centralization, automation, outsourcing, use of expert systems, and intelligent processing of collected data. * Performance reviews of IBM's NetView and AIX NetView 6000, Hewlett-Packard's HP OpenView, Sun's SunNet Manager, plus third party integration products from Peregrine Systems, SynOptics, Cisco, Remedy Action Request Systems, Ki Research, and more. * A look ahead at future distributed management protocols, switching technologies, smart agents, and increasing uses of object-oriented technology.