IBM Paves the Way for Mainstream Adoption of Autonomic Computing

IBM today unveiled first-of-a-kind self-managing autonomic technology to help customers simplify their IT systems and reduce labor costs for maintaining them. The new offerings will help software developers automate business processes and embed self-managing autonomic features within their applications.

The two new technologies, IBM's Policy Management for Autonomic Computing and the IBM Touchpoint Simulator, allow developers to simplify the development and management of their autonomic systems and products. The Touchpoint Simulator is the first offering in the autonomic tool space that allows developers to build and test their own autonomic components.

Since introducing the concept of autonomic computing in 2001, IBM has paved the way for mainstream adoption. Today, IBM has woven more than 475 autonomic features into more than 75 distinct products, making it the broadest portfolio of autonomic-enabled products, services and solutions in the industry. The company also announced that over the past year, more than 60 business partners around the world have adopted core IBM self-managing autonomic technology to help customers transition to on demand business.

According to Alan Ganek, vice president, Autonomic Computing and CTO Tivoli Software, IBM, "Most organizations today manage large and complex IT environments, and while the cost of technology has dropped, spending on management and administration continues to rise. Self-managing autonomic technology can enable systems to automatically tune themselves, sense and respond to changes, and prevent and recover from outages in the IT environment -- lessening the burden on IT professionals to initiate and handle those tasks."

New Self-Managing Autonomic Technology

In a move to simplify the management of products and systems, IBM is offering two new innovative autonomic technologies on alphaWorks, IBM's online resource for emerging technologies. Last year alone, there were more than 21,500 downloads of autonomic technology on IBM alphaWorks, which demonstrates the strong demand for self-managing software by the development community.

IBM's new technologies are:

--  IBM's Policy Management for Autonomic Computing (PMAC) -- the
    culmination of an 18-month project by IBM's development labs, the
    technology helps developers simplify the automation of IT and business
    processes and makes applications more self-managing and self-configuring.
    When PMAC is embedded within software applications, an "autonomic manager"
    tool can make decisions based on policies, or business rules, created by
    the developer. For example, policy-based decisions can tell a database when
    to backup based on preset policies such as time of day, activity level or
    even vacation schedules. When a managed resource, such as an application or
    database, requests guidance, the autonomic manager can rapidly return an
    action based on relevant policies, all without human intervention. To
    download PMAC visit: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/pmac/download.

--  The IBM Touchpoint Simulator -- the software simplifies the
    development of autonomic systems by connecting computing resources, like
    servers or databases, with autonomic management applications. The simulator
    helps developers build autonomic technologies by giving them a realistic
    architecture to test the system -- without facing the complexity and
    inconsistency of a real-world IT system. To download the IBM Touchpoint
    Simulator visit: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/touchpoint.

Driving Adoption of Autonomic Technology Through Business Partners

In the past year, more than 60 independent software vendors (ISVs) around the world have committed to incorporate IBM's autonomic technology into their applications. Software companies such as Forum Systems, LeoStream Corporation, NetFuel, Network Physics, Singlestep Technologies and Solid Information Technology are among the dozens of IBM business partners who are making autonomic computing real for their customers today. These ISVs are now well positioned to jointly go-to-market with IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks; for details go to www.ibm.com/isv.

For example, Singlestep Technologies installed an autonomic solution for computer services company, LAN Solutions, located in McLean, Virginia, which helped them realize a 20-40 percent efficiency savings, reducing the volume of problems the IT staff had to handle so they are free for other projects.

Through its autonomic computing business partner initiative, ISVs are working with IBM to add core autonomic capabilities to their products, enabling them to self-configure, heal, optimize and protect. IBM also offers autonomic enablement support to business partners through the worldwide IBM Innovation Centers. With 25 centers around the world, the IBM Innovation Centers provide partners with access to IBM skills and equipment, to help them port, migrate and test their applications on on-demand technologies.