Patent ID: 7010586

Claim:
A network management system, comprising: an event gateway which is coupled to one or more managed objects and which is configured to deliver events generated by the one or more managed objects to one or more managers; and a platform-independent interface to the event gateway, wherein the event gateway is configurable to communicate with the one or more managers through the platform-independent interface to deliver the events generated by the one or more managed objects; wherein the event gateway comprises a plurality of event distribution server sinks configured to receive events generated by the one or more managed objects and distribute the events to the one or more managers such that one of the one or more managers receives events from a plurality of different ones of the event distribution server sinks; and wherein the gateway is configurable to provide the one or more managers with subscriptions to the events as a function of event criteria specified by the one or more managers, wherein events meeting the specified event criteria are delivered and events failing to meet the specified event criteria are filtered out.