Scalable Device Management Using Software Agents

The sale of consumer devices is expected to exceed the sale of desktop computers by 2004, presenting a great opportunity for device manufacturers and service providers. At the same time, this presents a great challenge for the scalability of management solutions of such devices. This paper will describe an approach that uses one-stop mobile agents to dynamically distribute resource consumption between devices and their servers. This promotes rapid time-to-market, as the agent-hosting environment is less complex than a complete management interface. It is also efficient over the long term, as devices acquire any needed functionality on a just-in-time basis.