Writing a book of the present scope and the direction of a new technology can be a daunting task. However I was very fortunate to have the cooperation and help from numerous sources. From within IBM I am grateful to Alan Ganek, Ric Telford, Veronica Tseng, Sam Lightstone, Miles Barrel, Mike Loughran, and Susan Visser who helped with my persistent questions and cajoling requests for information. Particular thanks goes to Peter Andrews of IBM who helped me reconstruct my early drafts as we threw out the original book organization and rearranged the table of contents to make it more legible and understandable.
Special thanks to my editor Jeff Pepper at Pearson Prentice Hall for his inspiration and patience as the book developed and helped by Linda Ramagnano who arranged the administration. Thanks to Jaclyn Vassallo for her copy editing. Also thanks to Donna Cullen-Dolce for the management of the book's production. And thanks to my many IT industry associates, among them Tony Johnson in Trinidad who helped with questions on the scale, impact and scope of autonomic computing.
Lastly, I would like to thank my wife Annette, who has always given me encouragement in anything that I do or projects that I attempt.