ABSTRACT
Corporations everywhere have made the functional shift from the mainframe-centered data processing environment to the client/server configuration. With this conversion have come new economies, a greater variety of operational options, and a new set of challenges. In the mainframe-centric installation, systems management was often the administrative twin of the computing complex itself: the components of the system were confined to one area, as were those who performed the administration of the system. In the distributed client/server arrangement, those who manage the systems are again arranged in a similar fashion. This distributed infrastructure has complicated operations, even to the extent of making the simple act of logging in more difficult.
