IT operations costs are accelerating, and today'sincreasingly complex architectures and distributed computinginfrastructures only make matters worse. The solution: autonomiccomputing. Autonomic systems are self-configuring, self-healing,self-optimizing, and self-protecting. They operate intelligently anddynamically, acting on your policies and service requirements. This bookpresents everything IT leaders and managers need to know to prepare forautonomic computing — and to begin leveraging its benefits.

Coverage includes:
* How autonomic computing can reduce costs, improve servicelevels, enhance agility, simplify management, and help deliver the "ondemand" business
* The key elements and attributes of autonomiccomputing systems
* Current autonomic technologies from IBM andmany other leading suppliers
* Autonomic computing architectures, open standards, development tools, and enablers
* Implementation considerations, including a new assessmentmethodology
* The future of autonomic computing: businessopportunities and research challenges