IBM Rolls Out Self-Managing Computing

ARMONK, N.Y. -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today renewed its long-standing commitment to reducing IT complexity by announcing new offerings that support the next phase of Autonomic Computing and deliver on the promise of self-managing, self-healing computing systems -- a goal the company riveted its attention to more than six years ago.

IBM is leading the way into the next phase of Autonomic Computing which leverages self-managing capabilities to provide operational intelligence from the data center to business leaders.

The new offerings give customers the ability to make better use of the intelligence that lies within their computing systems to benefit strategy and planning, analysis, deployment of resources, operations and maintenance while improving delivery of technology as a service. In this next phase, Autonomic Computing helps users drastically improve their management of energy consumption, assets and facilities, governance and risk, and finance and accounting.

These technologies and services support the original goals of Autonomic Computing to establish IT systems that regulate their own health and thereby support the business goals and policies of organizations.

In October 2001, IBM Research unveiled the IBM Autonomic Computing Manifesto to IT industry leaders and proposed a solution to the challenge of maintaining the increasingly complex computing environments that millions of businesses, billions of humans and trillions of devices rely on each day: build systems that regulate themselves much in the same way the autonomic nervous system regulates and protects human bodies.

"This was and remains a grand industry challenge that IBM issued to both itself as well as other IT companies," said Alan Ganek, vice president of Autonomic Computing and CTO of IBM Tivoli software. "The difficulty is not the machines themselves -- the industry has brilliantly exceeded goals for computer performance and speed. The challenge is to create the open standards and new technologies needed for systems to interact effectively, to enact predetermined business policies more effectively, and to be able to protect, heal and manage themselves with minimal dependence on human intervention."

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)