Described is automated distributed management in a local area network of application tasks downloaded from the Internet an automatic task manager software agent operating on a network node in the local area network. An automatic task manager software agent is also communicatively coupled via the Internet for downloading at least one policy with a scheduled task from an application service and generating a task result file for the at least one policy. The automatic task manager has access to a memory including a policy database accessible to the automatic task manager for storing the at least one downloaded policy, and a storage module for storing the at least one task result file. The automatic task manager can also periodically perform an entitlement check for verifying whether a user has rights to run a current installation of an application.