Now that we are in the 21st century, most companies need to have some form of connectivity or another in order to have their business running well. In another word, network management can be the life line of these companies. Can you imagine Yahoo, Google, and Ebay going down for a few minutes? Millions of dollars could be lost during those few minutes. As such, the importance of network management in this type of companies cannot be underestimated.

In order to understand network management better, we have to look at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) which looks at security management, fault management, configuration management, accounting management and performance management.

Security Management

Security Management looks at alerting the personnel when resources are accessed. An example would be emailing or calling the network personnel that a resource is down and needed his attention or sending messages when certain files is accessed.

Fault Management

Fault Management is to log, find, and alert the network personnel of problems that will effect the systems operations.

Configuration Management

Configuration Management is to identify effects on network's operation after tracking the software plus the hardware on the network.

Accounting Management

This is to watch and determine the usage of information or resources for billing purposes. A typical company such as a mobile company or internet service provider would need these features in their business operations to bill their customer.

Performance Management

Monitoring, assessing, and adjusting the available bandwidth and network resource usage are tasks that are performed by network personnel as part of performance management system. This is to make the network run more efficiently.

In order to have a good network management system, the 6 pillars of network management need to be implemented by the network personnel in their companies.