REMOTE SOFTWARE INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE

A human engineer using a computer system can maintain numerous software services and packages installed on a number of servers through a single master server and a computer network. Each software service and package is represented in a package and service template datastore 120 in templatized form. The installation template includes placeholder data which represents server-specific information used to install the computer software. The placeholder is included in program modules, configuration data files, and/or installation scripts. To install the computer software on the selected server computer, a master server retrieves server-specific information for the selected server, substitutes the retrieved server-specific data for the placeholder data to form server-specific installation data, and transports the server-specific installation data to the selected server for execution.