CMS leverages the ubiquity of the internet and the convenience of the web for con- figuration management. CSM provides foundations on which: Network equipment vendors can build element and network management systems. Telecom carriers can build custom network management solutions. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), System Integrators (SIs) and enterprises can build application, system and network management solutions. Service providers can build OSS. CMS allows solution providers to leverage technologies such as Java beans, XML, JDBC, CORBA and SNMP to deliver web-based solutions for providing access to management information. More complex and disparate devices are being integrated into the network infra- structure. A greater diversity of applications and services such as ERP and video conferencing are being provided over the same network infrastructure. Maintaining availability, reliability and responsiveness of these services requires coordinated management and configuration of many devices such as routers and applications from several vendors and manufacturers. Devices and applications from different vendors often have their own configuration interfaces and rules. Unified manage- ment of these devices and applications adds great value to the service provider, or at least greatly reduces cost. Most enterprises and service providers have manual or custom software for man- aging and configuring their network infrastructure. However, as the network infra- structure becomes large and complex, the frequency and the complexity of the configuration tasks rise rapidly. For example, a slight change in policy might mean reconfiguring hundreds of devices. Even if there is unified management at the NMS of any class of device, most networks are multivendor networks and SO the change must be repetitively translated for, and should be an input to, a large number of management applications. This is wasteful and so OSS vendors such as AdventNet and Clarity have built successful businesses by providing automated configuration m