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Java in the management sphere, Part 1

A historical look at Java's emerging role in the changing system and network management

By Max Goff, JavaWorld.com, 10/20/99

Understanding the Java platform and its relation to the problem space of system and network management applications on the Internet is a little like trying to understand the nature of the Web itself. There are no edges, no linear models, no apparently singular, limited set of protocols and APIs that you can neatly stack up, reference, and understand. Movement through the jungle of management technologies is an intricate and complex journey, fraught with peril for the uninitiated. But you cannot underestimate the importance of network resource management, not with Internet usage (now approaching 200 million users worldwide) growing almost as fast as such underlying technology drivers as runaway ecommerce and embedded systems growth. The challenge and the opportunity in this problem space represent fertile ground for the ambitious Java developer as well as the budding Javapreneur.

TEXTBOX: TEXTBOX_HEAD: Series title: Read the whole series!

To understand the relationship of the Java platform to the management space, a bit of history is in order. We will spend most of our time in this, the first installment of our series, laying contextual groundwork -- defining the management space, acknowledging its history and legacy, and setting the stage for Java's entrance into it.

Management and the Internet

Though the Internet started as a research project funded by the US Department of Defense (DOD) in 1972, it was effectively born in its more modern incarnation in 1983, when TCP/IP replaced ARPANET at the DOD.

Given the proliferation of technologies based on Internet-related standards (TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CGI, and of course, Java, to name a few), it stands to reason that management software will be involved somewhere in the cycle of any given device's life. From design to manufacturing, distribution to tracking, connection and configuration to repair and recycling, management software of some kind will be employed.

What is management?

What, strictly speaking, is meant by the phrase management software? While some applications might have obvious management functionality, such as the ability to react to a fault on an arbitrary network node, other applications might not. Based on traditional approaches, and, consequently, the capabilities expressed by existing or legacy infrastructures, we can define the high-level functional areas for system and network management:

  • Configuration management: Inventory, configuration, and provisioning
  • Fault management: Reactive and proactive network fault management
  • Performance management: Number of packets dropped, timeouts, collisions, CRC errors
  • Security management: Not traditionally covered by SNMP
  • Accounting management: Cost management and charge-back assessment
  • Asset management: Equipment, facility, and administration personnel statistics
  • Planning management: Trend analysis to help justify a network upgrade or bandwidth increase


Management applications built since the adoption of TCP/IP have tended to add value to a network in one or more of these areas. Noticeably absent from this functional list is the general area of storage management. And while storage management does deserve mention, for the purposes of this discussion, I'll avoid much detail in that particular space. Arguably, storage management is a proper subset of the management space; in order to solve the problems inherent in a storage area network, you must provide and utilize much of a generic management infrastructure. But, until I cover Jiro in a future installment, storage will be treated separately.

The management jungle

The evolution of management frameworks mirrors that of the growth of heterogeneous networks within large organizations. In the 1980s, before Microsoft became the monopoly player on the desktop, most enterprise IT organizations were still focusing on mainframe solutions. The Unix workgroup servers were making headway, and the Unix era was starting to take hold. But the PC was also making inroads. And since PCs often fell below the price threshold for IT approval, they stealthily made their way into organizations despite the lack of IT support; the first line manager of a small group would often have approval authority for the purchase of a low-cost item like a PC. And as soon as one person in the group had one, everyone wanted one. Naturally, it made sense to network these systems together. And soon, as important corporate data started filling those many PC disk drives, support for and management of these desktop PCs started to become important to large corporate players. The days when Unix workgroup servers and desktops had a monopoly on the resources of corporate IT departments were over.

Sun Microsystems was one of the pioneers in software management; the SunNet Manager (SNM), which was first shipped by Sun in the late 1980s, was one of the first entries in the space. SNM provided a cost-effective product that could expand to meet the needs of businesses in the early 1990s, when the networking of smaller systems started to become strategic to commercial health. In November 1997, Sun announced that no further development work would be funded for SNM, though it seems that the company intends for the product to remain a cash cow for the corporation.

Novell, a pioneer in networking itself, was also one of the early entrants in the management space. But its focus on a more proprietary network protocol (SPX/IPX) instead of TCP/IP proved to be an evolutionary dead end.

Today, a number of players exist in the management space, most of whom have provided point-to-point solutions within proprietary frameworks. Computer Associates, IBM (Tivoli), Hewlett-Packard (Open View), and BMC represent the bulk of the big business players when it comes to enterprise-scale management framework packages. Other providers include Platinum, Cisco, Microsoft, and, of course, Sun Microsystems with its Enterprise Manager products. SNM is a framework as well, but is no longer a viable player given the success of others in the market.

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