| Academia and autonomic computing |
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Within the past two decades the development of raw computing power coupled with the proliferation of computer devices has grown at exponential rates. This phenomenal growth along with the advent of the Internet have led to a new age of accessibility—to other people, other systems, and most importantly, to information. This boom has also led to unprecedented levels of complexity.
The simultaneous explosion of information and integration of technology into everyday life has brought on new demands for how people manage and maintain computer systems. Demand is already outpacing supply when it comes to managing complex, and even simple computer systems. Unfilled I/T jobs in the United States alone number in the hundreds of thousands. Even in uncertain economic times, demand for skilled I/T workers is expected to increase by over 100 percent in the next six years.
As access to information becomes omnipresent through PCs, hand-held and wireless devices, the stability of current infrastructure, systems, and data is at an increasingly greater risk to suffer outages and general disrepair. IBM believes that we are quickly reaching a threshold moment in the evolution of the industry's views toward computing in general and the associated infrastructure, middleware, and services that maintain them. The increasing system complexity is reaching a level beyond human ability to manage and secure. This increasing complexity with a shortage of skilled I/T professionals points towards an inevitable need to automate many of the functions associated with computing today.
From the realization of this problem the notion of autonomic computing systems was born when Paul Horn, IBM's senior vice president of research, presented his Autonomic Computing Manifesto ideas to the National Academy of Engineers at Harvard University in a March 2001 keynote address. |
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A Grand Challenge — a problem that by virtue of its degree of difficulty and the importance of its solution, both from a technical and societal point of view, becomes a focus of interest to a specific scientific community.
The difficulty in developing and implementing autonomic computing is daunting — enough to constitute a grand challenge. At the heart of the matter is the need to bring together minds from multiple technical and scientific disciplines as well as differentiated businesses and institutions to share a sense of urgency and purpose. Although IBM is determined to take on this challenge, one company cannot do it alone, rather it will take a concerted, long-term, worldwide effort by researchers in a diversity of fields.
Part of the challenge lies in the fact that autonomic computing has been conceived as a holistic approach to computing. The difficulty is not the machines themselves. Year after year scientists and engineers have brilliantly exceeded goals for computer performance and speed. The problem now lies in creating the open standards and new technologies needed for systems to interact effectively, to enact pre-determined business policies more effectively, and to be able to protect themselves and "heal" themselves with a minimal dependence on traditional I/T support. |
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The success of autonomic computing will hinge on the extent to which theorists can identify universal principles that span the multiple levels at which autonomic systems can exist — from systems to enterprises to economies. A vision this large requires that we pool expertise in many areas of computer science as well as in disciplines that lie far beyond computing's traditional boundaries. We must look to scientists studying nonlinear dynamics and complexity for new theories of emergent phenomena and robustness. We must look to economists and e-commerce researchers for ideas and technologies about negotiation and supply webs. We must look to psychologists and human factors researchers for new goal-definition and visualization paradigms and for ways to help humans build trust in autonomic systems. We must look to the legal profession, since many of the same issues that arise in the context of e-commerce will be important in autonomic systems that span organizational or national boundaries
Bridging the language and cultural divides among the many disciplines needed for this endeavor and harnessing the diversity to yield successful and perhaps universal approaches to autonomic computing will perhaps be the greatest challenge. It will be interesting to see what new cross-disciplines develop as we begin to work together to solve these fundamental problems.
We call on our academic colleagues to drive exploratory work in autonomic computing. We propose that the research community recognize it as an important field of academic endeavor. We also call on our partners at government labs to collaborate with us on crucial projects in this area. We fund a regular stream of academic awards and fellowships to support research in this area, and we call on others in the I/T industry to do the same. |
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- There are over 30 universities worldwide with curriculum containing autonomic computing content.
- Joint research relationships have increased to over 25 professors.
- www.autonomiccomputing.org is live; built and owned by the academic community.
- At last check, there were 141 academic publications on "Autonomic Computing". This number is growing every day.
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In 2003, there were 5 conferences with autonomic computing content, in 2006 this number has increased ten-fold. A small sample of these conferences include:
- IBM Academy: 4th Proactive Problem Prediction, Avoidance and Diagnosis Conference: Predictive Techniques for Self-healing and Performance Optimization.
- 3rd IEEE Workshop on Engineering of Autonomic Systems (EASe 2006) dual located event, Potsdam, Germany and Columbia, MD.
- The 3rd IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2006), Dublin, Ireland, June 13-16 2006.
- The Second IEEE International Workshop on Self-Managed Networks, Systems & Services (SelfMan 2006).
- Second International Workshop on Smart Grid Technologies (SGT-2006).
- 1st Latin American Autonomic Computing Symposium (LAACS06) July 18th, 2006, Campo Grande, MS, Brazil.
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