Status information of one or more business office appliances operating behind a firewall are retrieved remotely by a service management application. The service management application transmits, via electronic mail from a first network behind a first firewall to a second network behind a second firewall, information that identifies the one or more business office appliances. A device management application at the second network receives the information and, based on the information, communicates instructions to one or more business office appliances. The instructions are executed on the one or more business office appliances without requiring re-boot of the business office appliances. Results of executing the instructions are used to generate a response document that is sent back to the service management application and/or to a database on the first network.