MCTP is used by the management controller, which sits on a server, appliance or similar device, to interact with devices being managed to monitor everything from device state and statistics, and hold management parameters (e.g., speed, power state and utilization, link state, error count, uncorrectable error count, etc.). Thus, the management controller aggregates management parameters from one or more devices and makes access to those parameters available to local or remote software, or to other management controllers.

Providing out-of-band management, MCTP removes dependence on in-band agents, allowing the baseboard management controllers to monitor devices without the presence of an operating system. This has an added benefit of releasing CPU cycles for other computing tasks since the impact to host performance is removed.

With the right server interface, using MCTP can provide the most relevant data through an intuitive user interface and a centralized location to access the monitoring data. This reduces the need for multiple monitoring agents. This is especially relevant for I/O, where an out-of-band management scheme has not been prevalent so far.

Let's look at an example for a business that has outsourced its storage to a cloud provider.