Outsourced management of home and SOHO Windows desktops

In this paper we propose a solution that allows traditional desktop management technologies designed for the corporate LAN environment — namely the widely available Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) — to operate in domestic, SOHO and small organization environments. This solution is based on the integration of WMI with the Broadband Forum's CPE Wan Management Protocol (CWMP), an industry standard for remote management of CPE in commodity broadband access environments. The proposed approach is fully compliant with the CWMP standards, making it easy to integrate with existing CWMP platforms. This integration extends the applicability of desktop management technologies to a wide range of Windows-based devices located in home networks, small offices and small organizations that currently lack proper management solutions. Consequently, it also opens the way for a number of novel application scenarios, which will also be discussed in this paper.