This paper describes the development of an industry-standard Application Programming Interface (API) which provides access to the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Common Management Information Service Element (CMISE). The management API solution that has been defined by X/OpenĀ® and the results of the API experimental prototype effort performed at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) is presented. This paper is based on and extends from a paper that was submitted to Globecom '92 [1].