| Global sales for autonomic computing systems and other similar approaches are going be very large. From large enterprise-wide products and services to smaller additional software products that will be added to existing products, customers can expect a wide range of products that will fit their requirements from all vendors. This—together with the growing problem of IT complexity, the need to simplify operations, and to reduce staffing and costs—will accelerate the need for enterprise solutions of all kinds. For large, medium, and small businesses, the problems are the same—complexity, costs, and staffing. This means that many software vendors will develop and produce products to meet and solve these needs. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly review some of the other vendors who have entered the market or are in the process of developing products. Including IBM, there are four vendors whose products are leading the development and implementation of autonomous computing. The others are: Other vendors will no doubt enter the market as and when they judge it necessary. This means that there will be broad, and growing, industry support for autonomous computing. The need to unify new hardware and software while harnessing industry-based standards for maximum penetration and satisfying customer needs is the driving force. The end result is a new generation of dynamic autonomous computing systems provided by a variety of vendors. This has to be good for corporations and their IT organizations. It is also about choice, which was referred to in Chapter 4. When IBM announced its autonomous computing initiative, it mentioned that, as large as IBM is, with all its resources, financial strength, and research facilities, it could not go it alone. IBM referred this as the Grand Challenge—defined as: "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 the focus of interest to a specific scientific community. "We call on our academic colleagues to drive the 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 on crucial projects in this area. We plan to fund a regular stream of academic awards and fellowships to support research in this area and we call on others in the IT industry to do the same."[1] IBM needs the support of the entire IT industry to focus its priorities on autonomic computing and acknowledge that we all must cooperate in developing the necessary standards and software to make this a reality. However, this is not easily achieved. | 
