Computer software and firmware to enable the management of computing devices and systems (servers, blades, desktop computers, laptops, hand-held devices, embedded systems, networking equipment, home entertainment systems, and other types of commercial, industrial and consumer electronic devices) belonging to one or more ecosystems (an ecosystem can be all systems/devices in an organization, or some/all systems sold to many/all customers by a system or device manufacturer, or some/all sytems running the software of a given Independent Software Vendor, or some/all systems at various customer sites mananged by a given service provider, or the collection of a type of device such as home gateways or digital video recordeds serviced by telecommunications service provider, etc;) A system or device can belong to more than one ecosystem (e;g;, Company A ecosytem AND hardware vendor B ecosystem AND software vendors' C and D ecosystems AND managed service provider E ecosystem