| The prospect of autonomic technology for small and medium businesses is both intriguing and necessary. One thing small businesses cannot afford or deal with is the issue of IT complexity. The time taken to deal with complexity issues will affect the profitability of most small businesses. As a result, they fail to get the benefits they expected from the technology, which is required to support them and grow their business. IBM's autonomic computing goal is to make technology take care of the things technology can take care of, freeing people to do the things they do best: thinking about how they can use technology to solve business problems and concentrating on the business. SMB owners do not have a lot of time to deal with IT on a day-to-day basis. They need to concentrate on growing and managing their business. They do not have the finance or the human resources to spend on IT. To be successful, the SMB market is going to need a pretested, pre-integrated autonomic software solution. This solution needs packaged intelligence that automatically modifies or adds resources to the existing SMB infrastructure environments. It needs to adjust the system capacity immediately, streamlining operations, optimizing resources, lessening complexity, and lowering management costs. The vision of autonomic computing as a holistic approach to managing IT is never more relevant than to small business owners. An Example—Net Integration Technologies Inc. Net Integration Technologies Inc. (NITI), a software developer, delivers an autonomic computing solution to the small and mid-sized business and enterprise (SMB/SME) market with its autonomic, Linux-based Net Integrator Operating System (NIOS). NITI is one of the first companies to deliver on the promise of autonomic technology with a complete set of intelligent networking solutions for the SMB market. Its NIOS operating system simplifies deployment and administration for VARs (Value Added Resellers) and boasts self-healing and self-maintenance capabilities in support of its network software. NITI's Linux-based NIOS-powered servers are self-aware, self-maintaining, self-tuning, and self-healing, greatly reducing the cost and complexity of IT infrastructure. The company also announced the successful launch of its ExchangeIt! collaborative software. ExchangeIt! works with NIOS to provide SMB/SMEs with an affordable and reliable solution. Millions of businesses don't have the budget or the time to manage what has become an IT infrastructure nightmare with traditional servers. NITI offers out-of-the-box setup in a fraction of the time it takes with traditional servers, bulletproof Linux security, self-healing computing and a system that runs month after month with minimal human intervention. NIOS-powered servers and add-ons like ExchangeIt! answer the call for significant changes in the way computing is managed by small and mid-sized businesses. Net Integration Technologies' NIOS software and ExchangeIt! groupware provide SMB/SMEs with a complete set of intelligent networking solutions that are secure, easy to deploy, and easy to maintain. Building on top of open source software, such as Linux, and using commercial, off-the-shelf hardware components, the NITI has achieved an autonomic computing environment that conforms to existing networking and open computing standards. Combining open source Linux software with its own patent-pending technology, Net, NIOS is taking Linux beyond where it is today. NIOS-powered servers automate common setup procedures, streamlining deployment and maintenance. NIOS is self-healing—it is able to recover from routine and extraordinary events that might cause some of its subsystems to malfunction or crash. It is able to discover problems or potential problems, and then find a way to fix these in order to keep functioning smoothly. The Key NIOS Platform Components NetIntelligence is an artificial intelligence module that facilitates and employs intuitive autonomic features to simplify deployment, installation, and ongoing maintenance. It provides NIOS-powered servers with self-healing and self-monitoring capabilities and offers automatic network discovery, configuration, and real-time optimization. NetIntelligence also provides autoconfiguration of all internal subsystems, including firewall parameters, DNS records, and DHCP parameters. SystemER enables easy recovery from any type of catastrophic failure into a fully functional state in just two minutes. No other SMB server has ever been able to match this level of recoverability. ExchangeIt! is a full-featured collaboration server created for SMBs that is an alternative solution to Microsoft Exchange Server. It provides users with schedule sharing, group schedules, meeting invitations, contact list sharing, group contact lists, task lists, journal sharing, and notes. ExchangeIt! works seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook® and gives SMBs a more manageable and cost-effective alternative to Microsoft Exchange. TunnelVision is an intelligent Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution. It is a fully automated solution that installs quickly and provides automatic route discovery and propagation across the VPN. TunnelVision also automates the propagation of DNS information across the VPN and can work without static IP addresses. Expression Desktop is zero-setup, zero-maintenance, networkcentric, Linux-based Microsoft-replacement desktop. Expression provides users with an automatically and fully configured desktop. Expression provides virus-free computing, can run Windows applications, and gives system administrators complete control of the corporate desktop environment. DoubleVision is a redundant Internet connectivity technology designed to connect multiple high-speed interfaces to NIOS-powered servers. It load shares across multiple Internet feeds from different ISPs, automatically detects network problems, and fails over to back up bandwidth. DoubleVision has a built-in DDNS capability. For more information on NIOS, contact Net Integration Technologies Inc., or see their Web page at www.net-itech.com. Small Business Conclusions The current data indicate that small businesses are embracing electronic commerce and spending significant and increasing amounts on information technology. Small businesses are serving as providers to other small businesses and are a contributing force in the economy. On average, small firms may not be technologically sophisticated, but some are among the most sophisticated developers of new technology. And while some small firms are less technologically advanced, they are often, because of their size, in a better position to act quickly to adopt—and make innovative adaptations to—new technologies in the market. E-commerce takes a number of forms—business-to-business, business-to consumer, e-procurement, and e-marketplaces or auction sites. Small businesses participate in e-commerce as a supplier of IT products and services and also as a buyer of IT products and services, mainly to minimize costs and increase sales. E-commerce growth is concentrated in the business-to-business sector. However, business-to-consumer e-commerce is growing gradually and is dominated by larger companies. As this phenomenon continues, small businesses may continue to find more uses for on demand business e-commerce. The growth of Internet technology among small businesses is expected to expand rapidly as owners become aware of, educated in, and knowledgeable about the potential for process efficiencies and cost savings. Global expansion of the Internet also continues, which will mean new competitive challenges for the U.S. small business sector. Proposals to regulate and tax Internet sales will likewise continue to increase, and small businesses will serve themselves well by staying informed and involved as e-commerce develops. It is with this backdrop that IBM has committed resources and marketing to this important initiative. | 
