AUTONOMIC COMPUTING: ARCHITECTURE, APPLICATION AND CHALLENGES

Advances in computing and communication technologies and software tools have
resulted in an explosive growth in networked-applications and information services that cover
all aspects of our life. These services and applications are inherently complex, dynamic and
heterogeneous. Similarly, the underlying information infrastructures such as the Internet are
complex, heterogeneous and dynamic. This combination exacerbates complexities related to
application development, configuration and management, and makes current computing
paradigms brittle and inefficient. As a result, applications, programming environments and
information infrastructures are rapidly becoming unmanageable, insecure and inefficient when
handling runtime changes. This has led researchers to consider alternative programming
paradigms and management techniques that are based on strategies used by biological systems
to deal with complexity, dynamism, heterogeneity and uncertainty. Autonomic computing is
inspired by the human autonomic nervous system that handles complexity and uncertainties, and
aims at realizing computing systems and applications capable of managing themselves with
minimum human intervention.