Distributed network, systems and application management is an active field of research motivated - among others - by the experiences with deploying centralized management systems in large-scale corporate networks. To overcome deficiencies of centralized management systems a lot of research has been done.
Management by Delegation (MbD) [4,14,15] defines a concept for delegating functionality from managing systems to agents in order to enhance them at runtime. The decision when this delegation should happen and which kind of functionality should be transferred to the agents is taken by the managing system, thus preventing autonomous decisions by the agents. Flexible agents [11] rely on MbD and exhibit a certain degree of autonomy; they are able to receive event notifications from peers and can be grouped together in order to jointly achieve a task. In recent years mobile agents [12,13] which add the concept of mobility to flexible agents or MbD have been investigated. Their roaming capabilities allow them to move across networks in order to achieve specific, pre-defined tasks. However, the applicability of mobile agents is bound by security concerns; [5] and [20] discuss these aspects. Mobile management agents are designed to achieve administrative tasks on systems and software; while [1] discusses the advantages of applying mobile agents to management, [3] presents a Java-based environment for configurable and downloadable lightweight management applications.
Taking care of the growing importance of customer care is the aim of Customer Service Management (CSM) [9]. It offers a management interface between customer and service provider, which enables the customers to monitor and control their subscribed services.