Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operation, administration, maintenance, and provisioning of networked systems.

• Operation deals with keeping the network (and the services that the network provides) up and running smoothly. It includes monitoring the network to spot problems as soon as possible, ideally before users are affected.
• Administration deals with keeping track of resources in the network and how they are assigned. It includes all the “housekeeping” that is necessary to keep the network under control.
• Maintenance is concerned with performing repairs and upgrades; for example, when equipment must be replaced, when a router needs a patch for an operating system image, or when a new switch is added to a network. Maintenance also involves corrective and preventive measures to make the managed network run “better,” such as adjusting device configuration parameters.
• Provisioning is concerned with configuring resources in the network to support a given service. For example, this might include setting up the network so that a new customer can receive voice service.

Network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, pager or other alarms) in case of outages.

Network performance management consists of measuring, modeling, planning, and optimizing networks to ensure that they carry traffic with the speed, reliability, and capacity that is appropriate for the nature of the application and the cost constraints of the organization. Different applications warrant different blends of capacity, latency, and reliability. For example:

• Streaming video or voice can be unreliable (brief moments of static) but needs to have very low latency so that lags don’t occur
• Bulk file transfer or e-mail must be reliable and have high capacity, but doesn’t need to be instantaneous
• Instant messaging doesn’t consume much bandwidth, but should be fast and reliable

Out-of-band management (sometimes called lights-out management or LOM) involves the use of a dedicated management channel for device maintenance. It allows a system administrator to monitor and manage servers and other network equipment by remote control regardless of whether the machine is powered on.

Application service management (ASM) is an emerging discipline within systems management that focuses on monitoring and managing the performance and quality of service of complex business transactions.

ASM is a well-defined process that uses related tools to detect, diagnose, remedy and report the service quality of complex business transactions to ensure that they meet or exceed end-users’ and businesses’ expectations (often formalized as service level agreements.) Performance measurements relate to how fast transactions are completed or information is delivered to the end user by the aggregation of applications, operating systems, hypervisors (if applicable), hardware platforms, and network interconnects. The critical components of ASM include application discovery & mapping, application “health” measurement & management, transaction-level visibility, and incident-related triage.

Website monitoring is the process of testing and verifying that end-users can interact with a website or web application. Website monitoring is often used by businesses to ensure that their sites are live and responding.

Business service management (BSM) is a methodology for monitoring and measuring information technology (IT) services from a business perspective. In other words, BSM is a set of management software tools, processes and methods to manage a data center via a business-centered approach. BSM technology tools are designed to help IT organizations view and manage technology infrastructures to better support and maintain the main services they provide to the business. BSM tools are critical enablers for the increasingly popular process that focuses on IT Service Management (ITSM) approach. BSM consists of both structured process and enabling software. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a set of IT management frameworks and concepts, has recently identified BSM as a best practice for IT infrastructure management and operations.