A machine-to-machine communication platform provides a flexible system for device control and solution hosting. In particular, the communication platform hosts and manages third party vertical solutions that interact with external devices. A third party gateway provides the third parties with access to the communication platform so that the third parties may define, configure, and monitor custom vertical solutions that are locally hosted in the communication platform. The communication platform provides a communication manager that implements a device independent communication facility for communicating with the external devices. As a result, the communication platform connects to, communicates with, and controls virtually any external device.

The present disclosure fallback management of managed devices utilizing edge management servers that periodically poll a primary management server. If the primary management server is unreachable, the edge management servers can assume management of a population of managed devices.

Various aspects are disclosed for remotely delivering, checking, and applying datacenter management configurations. A gateway service uses a set repository function provided that configures a datacenter management service to use a perimeter layer script repository of the gateway service for synchronization. The gateway service causes the datacenter management service to synchronize a datacenter layer script repository to store a script identified and retrieved from the perimeter layer script repository. The gateway service causes the datacenter management service to execute the script from its datacenter layer script repository.

An agent device is connected with one or more image-forming devices in a local network having a firewall provided therein. A management device carries out remote management of the image-forming devices in the local network through the Internet. The agent device includes a command receiving unit which starts connection with the management device and receives a management command from the management device via the firewall, the command being sent by the management device in response to the connection. An image-forming-device communication unit receives device-state information of a corresponding one of the image-forming devices according to the management command. A command response transmitting unit transmits the device-state information to the management device through the Internet.