Systems management refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed systems including (and commonly in practice) computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management

Network management

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

 initiatives in telecommunication

Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...

s.

Centralized management has a time and effort trade-off that is related to the size of the company, the expertise of the IT

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 staff, and the amount of technology being used:

• For a small business
  Small business
  A small business is a business that is privately owned and operated, with a small number of employees and relatively low volume of sales. Small businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships...
  
   startup with ten computers, automated centralized processes may take more time to learn how to use and implement than just doing the management work manually on each computer.
• A very large business with thousands of similar employee computers may clearly be able to save time and money, by having IT staff learn to do systems management automation.
• A small branch office of a large corporation may have access to a central IT staff, with the experience to set up automated management of the systems in the branch office, without need for local staff in the branch office to do the work.

System management may involve one or more of the following tasks:

• Hardware inventories.
• Server availability monitoring and metrics.
• Software inventory and installation.
• Anti-virus
  Antivirus software
  Antivirus or anti-virus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including but not limited to computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware...
  
   and anti-malware
  Malware
  Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
  
   management.
• User's activities monitoring.
• Capacity monitoring.
• Security management.
• Storage management.
• Network capacity and utilization monitoring.
• Anti-manipulation management

Functional groups are provided according to International Telecommunication Union

International Telecommunication Union

The International Telecommunication Union is the specialized agency of the United Nations which is responsible for information and communication technologies...

 Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Common management information protocol

Common management information protocol

The Common Management Information Protocol is the OSI specified network management protocol.Defined in . It provides an implementation for the services defined by the Common Management Information Service specified in , allowing communication between network management applications and...

 (X.700) standard.