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Oh, what a tangled Web we weave, when first we practice to... manage?! The metaphor of comparing the Internet and its World Wide Web (WWW) application to a spider's Web is apropos when discussing the management of today's enterprise. The WWW is the application that uses the Internet's pervasive mesh of hardware and software to present and deliver electronic information. For this information to retain its value, it needs to be managed.
As the information within today's enterprise also expands unabated within the digital world of computers and networks, the management requirements are becoming more and more challenging. Companies are co-evolving the use of internetworking technologies from the Internet with their current practices of information technology and enterprise management. This confluence of Internet technology and enterprise management is creating Web-based management.
We define Web-based management as the use of the World Wide Web technologies to do enterprise management, but its true character is only beginning to take shape. Many people know the Web. They are using a browser and are quite comfortable with this interface. Many people know enterprise management-particularly network and systems management. Various enterprise management frameworks have enjoyed many years of success and these technologies are evolving to meet the current and future demands of the Web-enabled enterprise. SNMP network management stations now control thousands of network devices. Nearly every PC now shipped is DMI-compliant. New software technologies, such as the Java programming language, promise such innovations as platform independence application development to make management processes easier to create and deploy. Intelligent agents are beginning to roam in cyberspace, collecting management information.
So, why not Web-based management?
In a fine bit of marketeering, Computer Associates declare in their ad that "Now You Can Manage The World With A Browser"2. Many companies since the mid-90s have been moving toward using, integrating, and perhaps, replacing their Information Technology (IT) with Internet-based technologies. The Internet is transforming the enterprise. This shift also coincides with the rise of the distributed object model that is competing with a maturing client/server model that has always presented daunting management challenges for controlling information.
Current management platforms and solutions are perceived as difficult to use and costly to maintain. They are also generally considered expensive to purchase. Many have scalability and platform dependency problems. Web-based management promises everything from a new interface to existing management frameworks to a complementary technology to a total replacement for the current conventional distributed enterprise management platform.
Web-based management has a definite cachet. It is new, alluring, exciting, and-immature. This book is an introduction to the current realities of Web-based management. It will hopefully provide information on how wide the gap is between the initial bravado and the reality of emerging Web-based frameworks and point products. There is a great deal of hype surrounding Web-based "anything" and the explosive rise in Internet use has generated a great deal of momentum.
Lewis Caroll once said that the less information you had, the quicker you could form your opinion. Will Web-based management be the "cake and eat it too" solution to enterprise management or should we gather as much data and experience as we can and make a more critical evaluation? Web-based management is a technology that needs to be examined much more closely to focus on whether the reality warrants the hype.
The World Wide Web is influencing nearly every aspect of information creation, gathering, and exchange. We use the Web to talk about the Web and the Internet is one of the best sources for discovering and investigating Web-based management topics and directions. In addition to traditional book and periodical references, the Bibliography refers to several Web sites that contain pertinent information-although, beware, the "links" tend to be less persistent than the paper and ink of hardcopy.
This is the Preface. It contains a general introduction to the book. It includes the goals of the book, the book's audience, how the book is organized, the conventions used, and acknowledgments.
Goals
This book is written to introduce the reader to the many facets of Web-based management. There are several specific goals:
- Introduce key definitions and terminology.
- Explain the technologies that have come together to create Web-based management. This includes explaining the Internet-based technologies, enterprise management, and the other "pieces" that are arranged to create Web-based management models.
- Create Web-based management models that are used for various emerging frameworks and products being developed and deployed by new and traditional enterprise management vendors.
- Evaluate the details, as well as the pros and cons of various Web-based management approaches and strategies.
- Provide pointers to more information on standards, frameworks, and products.
- Indicate the direction for Web-based management and the real-world applications that exist or are currently being developed.
Hopefully, after learning about Web-based management, the reader will know what it is and whether is has relevance and application for their enterprise.
Audience
This book is intended for traditional network administrators who are dealing with or will soon be confronted with the WWW and the dramatic rise in the use and adaptation of Internet technologies into the enterprise. Many more people will find this book interesting and worthwhile also. They include people interested in security such as data, Web security, and electronic commerce. Programmers such as Web programmers, Java programmers, and the various types of enterprise management programmers will find this book interesting and worthwhile. Network, systems, applications, and service management people, people interested in various management standards, and many others interested in the general state of IT and its management via new and emerging technologies will garner new outlooks on what is going on in these areas.
How This Book Is Organized
This book includes a complete discussion of Web-based technologies and enterprise management. It presents the Web-based management pieces, the models, and the current first-generation products and frameworks that are being deployed.
The book is organized into three sections containing a total of 16 chapters. There are three appendices, a bibliography, a glossary and acronyms section, and an index.
SECTION I, Defining the Pieces, introduces Web-based management and defines the various technologies and their components that must work together for this new type of management to be effective.
Chapter 1, Introduction to Web-based Management, contains a look at the evolving trends in enterprise computing and how these affect and will be affected by Web-based management. Key terms are defined. Web-based management is introduced as the union of Web-based technologies, management domains, and the enterprise. The Internet and the World Wide Web are also introduced. Other important technologies are briefly touched upon. These include Java, object-oriented technology, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Chapter 2, Enterprise Management, introduces the various types of management that make up our definition of enterprise management. These include network, systems, application, and service management. Important standards are described and the current frameworks are examined. These standards include SNMP, CMIP, TMN, and DMI.
Chapter 3, Network Data Security, describes an increasingly important aspect of management in the enterprise: network data security. Key standards and technologies are also shown and described.
Chapter 4, Defining the Pieces, introduces the major components that are used in Web-based management. These "pieces" include the Internet browser and server, the communication protocols, including the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and the mark-up languages for Web page composition and presentation. Other pieces described include MIME, CGI, Java, and other programming languages, scripting languages, VRML, audio and video presentation techniques, and "push" technologies.
SECTION II, Making the Models, takes the pieces defined in Section I and uses them to built Web-based management models.
Chapter 5, Making the Models, introduces the main types of models constructed to define Web-based management: the functional model, the data model, the information model, the conformance model, and the security model. These models are in turn used to create three frameworks: the native model framework, the proxy model framework, and the gateway model framework.
Chapter 6, Web-based Network Management, introduces the use of Web-based management with conventional network management frameworks such as SNMP and CMIP.
Chapter 7, Web-based Systems Management, describes how systems management can be done with Web-based management techniques.
Chapter 8, Web-based Distributed Object Management, demonstrates how the Web-based management strategies can be used for the newly evolving distributed object frameworks such as CORBA.
Chapter 9, Java and Web-based Management Applications, introduces the use of the Java programming language with Web-based management. This is especially promising for the area of the development of management applications.
SECTION III, Using the Models, takes the models created in Section II and applies them to newly emerging frameworks, products and other current directions.
Chapter 10, Using the Models, shows how fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management can be done with Web-based management schemes.
Chapter 11, Web-based Security, builds on the concepts introduced in Chapter 3 and demonstrates how these types of security are defined and implemented for Web-based management.
Chapter 12, JMAPI: The Java Management API, introduces the management API being defined by Sun Microsystems for the use of Web-based management of devices that contain the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and this set of management objects. The Web site and other pointers are included.
Chapter 13, WBEM: Web Based Enterprise Management, contains information on the Web-based management initiative called WBEM. This chapter describes the models used in this framework, lists new terminology, and demonstrates how WBEM will be used in the enterprise. Pertinent Web URLs are listed and the current status of the effort are stated.
Chapter 14, Web Server Management, describes the management of Web servers, including the Web-based management effort. This chapter also includes information on standards-based efforts for this task.
Chapter 15, Current Implementations, lists many of the current implementations being offered by various vendors and other parties.
Chapter 16, Current Directions and Developments, describes what is currently going on with various Web-based management efforts and tries to predict near-future developments and general directions.
Appendix A, A Web-based Management Chronology, contains a Web-based management time line.
Appendix B, Web-based Management RFC Index, and Appendix C, SNMP RFC Index, contain the Request for Comment (RFC) lists for Web-based management and SNMP, respectively. The Bibliography contains the list of references used. This includes books, periodicals, and Web sites. Finally there is a section that contains a glossary of terms and their associated acronyms.
Conventions Used in This Book
Listed below are the conventions for the various fonts used in this text.
Constant Width: is used for source code examples, and for quotations from source code within the text, including variable and function names. This font is also used for output printed by a computer and for the contents of files.
Constant Bold: is used for commands typed word for word by the user.
Italic: is used for command names, directory names, and filenames. It is also used for words that are being defined.
Bold: is used for command options. In addition, it is used for vectors in the mathematical sense.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my family-my wife Andrea and our three boys, Ryan, Sean, and Andrew-for their love and support throughout this project. I would also like to thank Andrew and Gloria Laspino for the many, many kind favors they have done for me. I would also like to thank my mother, Charlotte Harnedy.
Thanks to all my new friends and everyone I work with at the Excel Switching Corporation in Hyannis, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I have learned many new and exciting things dealing with telecommunications, open programmable switching, and enterprise management since I started working in Software Engineering under Dave Brajczewski. Thanks also to Bob Madonna.
Finally, I would like to especially thank Kerry Reardon, the production editor, and Mike Meehan and everyone at Prentice Hall PTR who helped see this project through to completion.
Sean J. Harnedy
October 1998
East Sandwich, Massuchussetts
References for Preface
- Partington, Angela, (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 560.
- Advertisement for Computer Associates Unicenter TNG enterprise management product, Network World (January): 8-9, 1998.
