To help implement and keep control of distributed systems, there is a demand to use what is typically known as system management software. Assuming a company is big enough and has operations spread out considerably enough to warrant a distributed system, the benefits are fairly clear. For a growing enterprise, you will find a cutoff point at which it becomes unrealistic to do individual installations on each station, and examine the paper and electronic trail left by each user in order to centralize the entire setup.

It therefore becomes necessary for managers to determine the information need of the organization and established goals for what is to be achieved with the proposed information system. It is imperative for the manager to ensure that his proposed information system has the full support of the management and adequate or required finances are appropriated for the project. If not the project might fail.

The systems management software takes into consideration the human's aversion to change but still takes control of the system through a configuration manager that manages the database within the training and testing setting, not to mention the real-time setting as well.

Remote management means that you are paying an individual or provider to monitor your networks at all times. This means trusting someone, but it also means that you don't have to wait for something to go wrong to call someone in order to help you. It also means that a problem can be fixed as soon as it pops up instead of waiting for it to grow and grow and possibly have a domino effect on the whole system, slowing or shutting everything down.

Most of the time, businesses that use IT functions outsource their work when it comes to the installation of networks or the setting up of systems. It is therefore, important at this point to ensure that one enlists the services of a reputable IT services firm that has the capacity and professional qualifications to do the work.

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.