If you manage or operate an industrial automation network, then network management is something that you are already doing. All of the activities that are involved in configuring, maintaining, monitoring, and troubleshooting your network are network management. For example, it is important to know which parts of your network are dependent on each other, how heavily each section of the network is being used, whether some devices are more prone to failure than others, and when devices should be replaced to prevent failure while in use. In industrial networks, chances are that most of these complicated tasks are done manually, by hand. Wouldn't it be ideal to automate these management tasks with software, in order to improve the efficiency of the process? That's exactly what network management software (NMS) does.