Autonomic Computing is one of the most important research drives in the I/T industry and in Computer Science departments at universities around the world. It is sometimes called by other names such as Proactive Computing, Adaptive Computing or even part of Artificial Intelligence, but the meaning is the same.

An Autonomic Computing system is a system with the following characteristics:

• Self-Healing: when unexpected errors or problems occur, the computer system is able to correct them or bypass them.
• Self-Configuring: the computer system is able to set itself up to perform whatever task is required of it.
• Self-Optimizing: the computer system makes sure that it is performing its task as efficiently as possibly.
• Self-Protecting: if attacked by hackers or viruses, the computer system can automatically take actions to defend itself

The ideas of Autonomic Computing are analogous to how the human body works. For example, basketball players think about looking for an open shot, passing to team mates, and defending against the other team. When players run the length of the court on a break, they concentrate on getting the basket. They do not have to think about making their heart beat faster, about altering their breathing pattern, or about altering their pupil dilation to focus on the rim of the basket. Regulating the circulation and breathing are critical to a player's success, but they should not require thought or attention. The autonomic nervous system in humans takes care of tuning these core functions and allows us to think on a higher level.

"The information technology industry loves to prove the impossible possible. We obliterate barriers and set records with astonishing regularity. But now we face a problem springing from the very core of our success-and too few of us are focused on solving it. More than any other I/T problem, this one-if it remains unsolved-will actually prevent us from moving to the next era of computing. The obstacle is complexity. Dealing with it is the single most important challenge facing the I/T industry."

- Paul Horn, Sr. VP of Research for IBM

Over the past few years the number of computing devices has increased dramatically and are becoming interconnected using the internet. PCs are no longer the only computing device that we use - mobile phones, personal organizers and even some home appliances have a lot of computing power. Also, the whole infrastructure that lies behind the internet - the web server farms, data centers and the software that glues it all together - is becoming larger and increasingly complex. There simply are not enough people, and it costs too much to manage all of this.

Autonomic Computing provides the technology to allow fewer people to manage more computing systems at a lower cost. In addition it could result in more robust computing systems that will crash less often, and be less vulnerable to virus attack and user errors.

IBM sees an Autonomic computer system as having and autonomic manager which monitors a computer element using sensors, analyzes this information using its knowledge database and hence plans what action to take and then executes that action using effectors. In this way a computer system can sense when a problem has occurred, or when it is under attack, or if it needs to tune or configure itself, and take some action to correct the situation. Of course, a huge amount of research is needed for computer systems to actually be able to make sensible decisions, but some primitive forms of this technology are already being added to IBM's products.