Web-based intranet services and network management

Intranets are composed of a network of various devices, systems, and services supporting a wide variety of applications within an organization. Providing a secure, reliable, and efficient operating environment to support the organization's daily activities and its business is the most challenging task faced by operations and management staff today. Current management practices typically involve the use of separate, incompatible tools and techniques for managing networks, systems, and applications. What is needed desperately is a simple, uniform framework for managing not only networks but also systems and applications. Web-based management is a promising approach that can provide a truly integrated management solution. This article examines the key emerging technologies involved in Web-based management. The authors present an integrated architecture that can be used to manage all the networking and computing resources in an Intranet. Also presented are several specific examples where Web technology has been applied in managing different target resources for validating the architecture