Self-Managing Computing

The high-tech industry has spent decades creating computer systems with ever mounting degrees of complexity to solve a wide variety of business problems. Ironically, complexity itself has become part of the problem. As networks and distributed systems grow and change, they can become increasingly hampered by system deployment failures, hardware and software issues, not to mention human error. Such scenarios in turn require further human intervention to enhance the performance and capacity of IT components. This drives up the overall IT costs-even though technology component costs continue to decline. As a result, many IT professionals seek ways to improve their return on investment in their IT infrastructure, by reducing the total cost of ownership of their environments while improving the quality of service for users.

Self managing computing helps address the complexity issues by using technology to manage technology. The idea is not new many of the major players in the industry have developed and delivered products based on this concept. Self managing computing is also known as autonomic computing. The term autonomic is derived from human biology. The autonomic nervous system monitors your heartbeat, checks your blood sugar level and keeps your body temperature close to 98.6°F, without any conscious effort on your part. In much the same way, self managing computing components anticipate computer system needs and resolve problems with minimal human intervention.

Self managing computing systems have the ability to manage themselves and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives. Self-managing systems can perform management activities based on situations they observe or sense in the IT environment. Rather than IT professionals initiating management activities, the system observes something about itself and acts accordingly. This allows the IT professional to focus on high-value tasks while the technology manages the more mundane operations.