The deployment of communications networks and distributed computing systems requires the use of open, standards-based, integrated management systems. During the last five years, the overall industry effort to develop, enhance, and integrate management systems has crystallized in the concept of management platforms. Manage­ ment platforms are software systems which provide open, multi vendor, multiprool distributed management services. They allow multiple management applications to run over core platform services which constitute the essential part of the management platform framework. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the features and technical character­ istics of distributed management platforms by examining both qualitative and quanti­ tative management capabilities required by each management platform service. The analysis covers the management platform run-time environment, the operational aspects of using management platforms, the development environment, which con­ sists of software toolkits that are used to build management applications, the imple­ mentation environment, which deals with testing interoperability aspects of using management platforms, and of course the distributed applications services which plat­ forms make available to management applications. Finally, the analysis covers the capabilities of several management applications, either generic or specific to devices or resources which run on top of management platforms.