Autonomic computing

An AC can be modeled in terms of two main control schemes (local and global) with sensors (for self-monitoring), effectors (for self-adjustment), knowledge and planner/adapter for exploiting policies based on self- and environment awareness.

Driven by such vision, a variety of architectural frameworks based on "self-regulating" autonomic components has been recently proposed.

The distributed applications running on these computer networks are diverse and deal with many tasks, ranging from internal control processes to presenting web content to customer support.

Additionally, mobile computing is pervading these networks at an increasing speed: employees need to communicate with their companies while they are not in their office.

They do so by using laptops, personal digital assistants, or mobile phones with diverse forms of wireless technologies to access their companies' data.

[6] This nervous system controls important bodily functions (e.g. respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure) without any conscious intervention.

Essentially, a closed control loop in a self-managing system monitors some resource (software or hardware component) and autonomously tries to keep its parameters within a desired range.

According to IBM, hundreds or even thousands of these control loops are expected to work in a large-scale self-managing computer system.

This includes its mission (e.g., the service it is supposed to offer), the policies (e.g., that define the basic behaviour), and the "survival instinct".