Autonomic Computing

At Artificial Life IV workshop in 1994, Jeffrey O. Kephart of IBM presented the paper "A Biologically Inspired Immune System for Computers." In this paper, Jeffrey described an antivirus architecture that modeled an immune system for computers and computer networks. Other biologically motivated ideas in this paper include the use of self-replication to fight virus self-replication.

IBM has since moved forward with a very aggressive strategy of building self-managing computer systems based upon autonomic principles. The four key areas they identify for their self-managing systems are:

• Self-Configuring, adapting to dynamic environments

• Self-Healing, diagnosing and preventing problems

• Self-Optimizing, automatically tuning and balancing

• Self-Protecting, detecting and protecting against attacks

The goals of this effort are manifold , and include a reduction in computing complexity of future systems, decreasing demand for IT specialists, cost savings, and providing the ability for systems and humans to collaborate to solve complex problems.

While it's not entirely clear how autonomic computing will be built and used in practice, it's an intriguing idea that may help in the development of robust and reliable software systems.