The deployment of communications networks and distributed computing systems requires the use of open, standards-based, integrated management systems. During the last five years, the overall industry effort to develop, enhance, and integrate man- agement systems has crystallized in the concept of management platforms. Manage- ment platforms are software systems which provide open, multi vendor, multiprotocol distributed management services. They allow multiple management applications to run over core platform services which constitute the essential part of the management platform framework....