| Advances in networking and computing technologies, and software tools have resulted in an explosive growth in applications and information services that influence all aspects of our life. These sophisticated applications and services are complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic. Further, the underlying information infrastructure (e.g., the Internet) globally aggregates large numbers of independent computing and communication resources, data stores, and sensor networks, and is itself similarly large, heterogeneous, dynamic, and complex. The combined scale, complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of networks, systems, and applications havemadeour computational and information infrastructures brittle, unmanageable, and insecure. This has necessitated the investigation of an alternate paradigm for system and application design, which is based on strategies used by biological systems to deal with similar challenges — a vision that has been referred to as autonomic computing.
The Autonomic Computing Paradigm has been inspired by the human autonomic nervous system. Its overarching goal is to realize computer and software systems and applications that can manage themselves in accordance with high-level guidance from humans. Autonomic systems are characterized by their self-* properties including self-configuration, self-healing, selfoptimization, and self-protection. Meeting the grand challenges of autonomic computing requires scientific and technological advances in a wide variety of fields, as well as new programming paradigms and software and system architectures that support the effective integration of the constituent technologies. The goal of this handbook, titled “Autonomic Computing: Concepts, Infrastructure and Applications,” is to give a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art of this emerging research area, which many believe to be the next paradigm for designing and implementing future computing systems and services. |
