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OVERVIEW
IBM'S PERSPECTIVE ON THE STATE OF
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
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"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." - Alfred North Whitehead
This quote made by the preeminent mathematician Alfred Whitehead holds both the lock and the key to the next era of computing. It implies a threshold moment surpassed only after humans have been able to automate increasingly complex tasks in order to achieve forward momentum.
IBM believes that we are at just such a threshold right now in computing. The millions of businesses, billions of humans that compose them, and trillions of devices that they will depend upon all require the services of the I/T industry to keep them running. And it's not just a matter of numbers. It's the complexity of these systems and the way they work together that is creating a shortage of skilled I/T workers to manage all of the systems. It's a problem that's not going away, but will grow exponentially, just as our dependence on technology has.
In short, we can't keep computing as we have for years.
But as Mr. Whitehead so eloquently put it nearly a century ago, the solution may lie in automation, or creating a new capacity where important computing operations can run without the need for human intervention. On October 15th, 2001 Paul Horn, senior vice president of IBM Research addressed the Agenda conference, an annual meeting of the preeminent technological minds, held in Arizona. In his speech, and in a document he distributed there, he suggested a solution: build computer systems that regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system regulates and protects our bodies.
This new model of computing is called autonomic computing. The good news is that some components of this technology are already up and running. However, complete autonomic systems do not yet exist. This is not a proprietary solution. It's a radical change in the way businesses, academia, and even the government design, develop, manage and maintain computer systems. Autonomic computing calls for a whole new area of study and a whole new way of conducting business.
We urge you to explore this site and download the full text of autonomic computing manifesto to learn more about autonomic computing and its implications for business and academia. We invite you to help launch the next era of computing.
THE PROBLEM 
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