Autonomic Computing: Research Challenges and Opportunities

The wide deployment of Internet technology has resulted in exponential growth in Internet application services (e.g., content hosting for data with web-based access, shared payroll applications, firewall-based security services, email and shared file services). The management and control of these application services is a challenging research problem due to the huge amount of data that needs to be collected and coordinated, the heterogeneity and the independence of resources and components required by these services and the fact that they run under different organizations and administration policies. This complexity has led to a situation where the cost to manage such systems is actually a lot more than the actual systems themselves. Consequently, the growing complexity of the IT infrastructure threatens to undermine the very benefits information technology aims to provide.