Network Management Systems - 6 : Overview

A network management system, or NMS, is an application designed to manage network devices. These systems commonly use SNMP as the communication protocol and are able to communicate to and manage devices located anywhere on the network.

Network management systems come in a variety of formats. Some are simple programs that are very inexpensive, and only manage one vendor's products. Other versions are very complex and expensive and have the ability to manage almost any vendor's products.

Some proprietary NMS applications are free, while the cost of other NMS systems can exceed 50 thousand dollars.

So as you can see, the costs and capabilities of these applications vary greatly. The abilities of different NMSes range from being able to tell you if a device is turned on, to some applications that are able to troubleshoot and even apply corrective action to malfunctioning devices in the network.
How important are some of these NMS systems? Imagine if a network controlling a Wall Street office were to fail, and the stock market was forced to stop trading. What kind of impact would this have? Spending 50 thousand dollars for an NMS that can quickly diagnose and correct the problem does not seem so outrageous in this example. So the type of NMS that an organization chooses depends on their needs and the degree to which their network operation is mission-critical.