| Abstract: | This paper proposes the application of conceptsfrom the area of intelligent agents to overcomedeficiencies of existing management architecturesregarding distribution of functionality and flexibility. Its main contribution is the proposal of amethodology for a flexible, distributed realization ofcomplex management tasks. The main application areas aredistributed services which are complex pieces of software, distributed across variousheterogeneous end systems in a network. Mostly, theyrely on the provision of other services as well. Theapproach relies on well-known concepts, such ascooperative distributed problem solving and intelligentagents, and offers a framework to combine these twoconcepts, providing a step on the roadmap to a flexible,distributed management architecture. The assessment of the approach is displayed throughout thepaper by scenarios from the area of nontime criticalfault management. |
