provides an overview to the family of systems management standards;
establishes the basis for partitioning the systems management standards into separate groups, specifying the scope of each group and identifying the principal components within each group;
gives guidance on the development of systems management standards and identifies the way they relate to each other;
defines terms for use by other systems management standards;
is applicable to the definition of all systems management standards and to all aspects of systems management of whatever scale;
is applicable to situations in which the responsibility for systems management is centralized and those where it is decentralized;
establishes a model for systems management, identifies several aspects of systems management (i.e. information, functional, communications, and organizational), and further refines the model to clarify these aspects;
identifies the principles governing conformance requirements and conformance claims to systems management standards.
There are no conformance requirements on the main body of this Recommendation | International Standard, however it does specify requirements on standards claiming compliance to systems management.
Annex A defines an application context for systems management and specifies the rules for negotiating systems management functional units. There are conformance requirements associated with these rules.