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Now in its second year, the Almaden Institute Symposium has chosen as its theme another Grand Challenge -- Autonomic Computing -- as a fitting successor to last year's focus on Nanotechnology. The three-day-long event at the IBM Almaden Research Center opened Tuesday with welcoming remarks by Robert Morris, vice president of personal systems and storage research and director of the Almaden lab.
"The purpose the conference," Morris told the audience, "is to facilitate collaboration on the science and technology of autonomic computing throughout the research community." Morris emphasized that, while the concept of autonomic computing was being realized today in the form of component technology, the real advance would come with a much more holistic approach.
The holistic message of autonomic computing, Morris reminded his listeners, was a key element of the 38-page "manifesto" published last October by Paul Horn, senior vice president, Research. Intended both as an acknowledgement of a problem and a call to arms, the manifesto argued that we must counter the intractable and growing complexity of our computing systems, which are beginning to outpace the capabilities of human administrators to cope, by adopting a fundamentally new approach to systems management. Taking a cue from the autonomic nervous system, which governs our bodies without demanding conscious attention, the proposed solution, namely, Autonomic Computing, will make systems increasingly self-managing. The anticipated result: a vast reduction in the level of complexity apparent to human beings, while simultaneously boosting reliability, security and performance.
In one of Tuesday morning's two "vision" presentations, Alan Ganek, vice president of autonomic computing, Software Group, called for a high-level framework and standards-based approach to autonomic computing that would enable end-to-end operation. The importance of getting components to work together is second, perhaps, only to getting people to work toward a common goal. As a step toward that end, Ganek extended an invitation to customers and industry partners, as well as academic, government and industrial research labs, to work with IBM on realizing the vision of autonomic computing.
By bringing together nearly 150 computer scientists from such such labs as Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, HP, Microsoft, Sun, DARPA and NASA, among others, the Almaden Institute represents the first large-scale conference to be devoted to the subject of autonomic computing and the beginning of a truly collaborative undertaking.
The wide-ranging affiliations of the attendees was reflected in the makeup of the three sessions that constituted the bulk of the first day's talks. Covering databases and storage systems, distributed computing and systems management, and government and industry initiatives, the sessions provided a forum for the presentation of a wide range of views.
Later sessions will cover entrepreneurial activities, relevant scientific subjects, and additional aspects of software and systems. And, as befitting an event meant to address problems faced by the users of information technology, customer perspectives will be heard, as well.
Because the conference is intended to spark awareness, interest and discussion, more than a dozen reporters were also invited to attend the conference and talk to the participants.
John Hennessy, of Stanford University, who delivered the second vision presentation, expressed a view evidently shared by many attendees in concluding that "we are at the threshold of a new era," one characterized, among other things, by the universal use of information services delivered on a utility model.
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Ken Birman, Cornell University, presents "Navigating in the Storm: A Distributed Computing Infrastructure for Autonomic Computing"
Additional Information
· Almaden Institute Homepage
· Almaden Institute 2002 Agenda
· Autonomic Computing
Download IBM's Perspective on the State of Information Technology
Related News
· IBM: Autonomic for the people
ZDNet - April 11, 2002
· Distributed computing shifts focus to self-managed systems
EE Times - April 11, 2002
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