SNMP is an industry standard and all major hardware and software vendors support it. All commonly-used operating systems can provide information using SNMP. Microsoft offers SNMP for their Windows platform; all Unix systems have SNMP daemons that receive requests from the other machines.
SNMP also offers a standardized, hierarchical way to group and access information, called Management Information Base (MIB). This defines which attributes can be accessed, and what data types are associated with them. This allows the creation of attributes that all devices should use for providing information on standard parameters such as network configuration, usage, and potential threats. It also allows custom parameters to be created so that they will not interfere with other devices' data.
Most operating systems come with various utilities that allow communication with other devices over SNMP. These utilities can be used to verify which attributes are available on specific devices and...