In an effort to apply and maintain distributed systems, there is a need to use what is known as system management software. Assuming an enterprise is big enough and has operations spread out substantially enough to guarantee a distributed system, the benefits are pretty much self evident. For a growing company, there is also a cutoff point at which it becomes unrealistic to do individual installations on each station, and go through the paper and electronic trail left by every user with the intention to centralize the actual whole setup.

Once system management is implemented, the process becomes more streamlined. The automation starts offering immediate benefits. It enables reduction in IT staff levels and improves security and information sharing among employees and departments, and with the data already centralized, the reporting and monitoring process becomes a lot easier.

Installation & Management: Fast and easy automation for new installations and upgrades is the core benefit. A company with a handful of computers all located in the same office can do individual installations. But it gets harder when a company has a large setup and a gazillion computers. Introduce system management, and the problems go away, the entire process is now streamlined and automated and needs a lot less effort and manpower.

The configuration manager makes use of the method of configuration management, which centers on setting up and upholding the steadiness and uniformity of your system's performance at all times. The configuration manager does this by using the systems management software's operational information such as its security features, firmware, documentations, tests and test material and others as well.

Many companies go with it because it is more cost effective. While you have to pay for the assistance, you may find that the basic service to have the system monitored is very low and even when there is a problem that needs to be addressed it is more cost effective to have the problem fixed remotely instead of having someone come out to the office and fix the problem.

Then there is configuration control, which is the list of methods and approval stages that are needed to modify a configuration point's traits and reinitiate them. Configuration status accounting is the facility needed to document and deal with the configuration baselines correlated to each point at any time period. The last task is Configuration audits, which has two aspects: functional audits and physical audits. The former deals with the functional and performance attributes of the configuration point. On the other hand the latter makes certain that the configuration point is established according to what is required by the detailed design records.


To summarize, the immediate advantages of using system management are very much real and the possibilities even bigger. End of the day, each company has to make an informed decision about this based on its own size and growth curve. A cost benefit analysis to figure out the ROI of system management software would be a good place to begin.