In response to a component management function call by a remote client application, the component management application programming interface (API) generates a message that identifies the called function and the version of the component management API. The component management API calls a local message transfer RPC command to send the message to a RPC command module. The RPC command module processes the local message transfer RPC command, and packages the message for transfer as a RPC over the heterogenous network. The RPC command module sends the packaged RPC to a network stack which in turn transmits the packaged RPC over the heterogenous network to a network stack in the server computer. The server network stack provides the packaged RPC to a server RPC command module that unpacks the RPC in a conventional manner to obtain the original message. The message is passed to a server component management API. The server component management API parses the message to determine the computer architecture of the client computer. With this information, server component management API reads the version specified in the message. If the specified version is incompatible with the version of the server component management API, a reply indicating the version incompatibility is transmitted to remote client application and otherwise the message is processed further by the server component management API.