As you can see, MOM offers quite a few areas of extensibility. The most commonly used extensibility feature of MOM is the management pack. And while the Management Pack Developer's Guide is somewhat useful, you should download the SDK if you plan on creating anything besides a management pack for MOM. In this chapter we covered several topics, including the following:
Common third-party management packs
Common third-party product connectors
MOM 2005 Management Pack Developer's Guide
MOM management packs
MOM 2005 SDK
MOM rule responses
MOM applications
MOM product connectors
One key reason for the possible creation of your own management packs is to help enforce security for your unique environment. MOM and SMS are great tools for helping to enforce security policies on your network and to deliver security updates in your environment. In the next chapter, we explore this topic in more detail.