 the drag and drop operation NMS Products of provisioning blocks using the development kit provided with Tivoli provi- sioning manager. Multiple elements in the network can be provisioned with a single work flow. The automation work flows can be created across domains. It follows service oriented architecture for more re-use of functionality. It is more of an IT infrastructure provisioning application rather than just a sys- tem provisioning manager. It supports operation on AIX, Windows, Linux, and Sun Solaris. The graphical user interface can be customized to generate role based views and a provisioning work flow can be re-used just like a tem- plate for future provisioning operations. 2. Tivoli configuration manager: This product handles secure inventory man- agement and software distribution. Software distribution mainly involves identifying missing patches on the client machine and installation of patches. The product even helps in building a patch deployment plan and can do package installation in distributed environment. The inventory module in the product identifies the hardware and software configuration of devices in the IT infrastructure, with functions to change system configuration. The secure environment is implemented using multilevel firewalls. 13.6 Telecom Network Management Products The current network management solutions are expected to be capable of handling multiple domains like enterprise networks, telecom networks, storage networks, and SO on. Most enterprise management solutions already discussed in this chapter handle multiple domains and can be used for application and service management in addition to network management. For example IBM Tivoli Network Manager IP Edition from the Tivoli family can be used for layer 2 and 3 data management associated with telecom networks. However there are products for telecom network and element management alone and specialized for specific telecom network and devices. Most of the network equipment manufacturers are the major developers of telecom spec