Vendors say all companies can have systems that manage themselves
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM MST
The appearance of autonomic computing solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs) may be the signal that this technology is shaking its pie-in-the sky image. Championed by IBM, autonomic computing is an approach to self-managed systems.
Ric Telford, IBM's VP for autonomic computing, acknowledges the concept often is perceived as futuristic, despite its practical nature. "Autonomic computing is a fancy way of saying there is a set of technologies that makes IT systems—servers, PCs, or databases—more self-managing," says Telford.
The term is derived from the body's autonomic nervous system, which automatically regulates functions like heartbeat. Likewise, says Telford, "in an IT shop, you would like the computers to handle the mundane tasks so that your IT people can focus on the differentiating tasks."
IBM contends autonomic capability is here today, touting 475 autonomic features in 75 distinct products, including its DB2 database and its Tivoli systems management solutions. For example, says Telford, DB2 8.2, released last fall, has a feature called DB2 Design Advisor that automatically optimizes the database. IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.1, released last December, detects the need for specific procedures such as adding servers to deal with overload dangers, enabling users to automate corrections.
Autonomic features tie back to four main properties, says Julie Craig, a senior analyst with Boulder, Colo.-based Enterprise Management Associates. These are the ability to self-configure, self-heal, self-optimize, and self-protect systems (see box). These characteristics, says Craig, can cut systems administration costs that consume about 60 percent to 70 percent of IT budgets.
"Autonomic computing allows IT departments to extend their budgets further," Craig says. "Instead of applying resources to solve basic problems, they'll have more resources to roll out new systems, or improve business processes."
Net Integration Technologies is targeting SMBs with its autonomic computing solutions built on top of the Linux operating system, says Ozzy Papic, founder and CEO. In December 2005, Net Integration announced an alliance with ERP vendor Sage Software under which Sage's Accpac ERP system is offered on Net Integration's Nitix platform.
"We've taken a standard Linux platform and built in autonomic capabilities that make systems easier to deploy and work with," says Papic. Configuring Linux and DB2 to run Accpac would typically take one or two full days, adds Papic, but it can be done with Nitix in about 10 minutes. Papic says this is possible because Nitix's "autonomic engine" is aware of all Linux subsystems and communicates the proper settings to Accpac.
Nitix also automatically backs up systems every 15 minutes, and automates other tasks such as adding new e-mail users. "That's in stark contrast with the traditional approach where you have to do things step by step, and if you get one step wrong, it doesn't work," says Papic.
The Sage alliance, says Papic, already has yielded dozens of sales to SMBs that want "mainframe-type reliability" at prices normally associated with Windows-based systems. It helps, he adds, that Nitix allows for Windows computing on the client side.
"People are very religious about the desktop," he says. "As long as you let them run Windows XP and Microsoft Outlook on the desktop—while allowing them to achieve high reliability at low cost on the back end—there will be interest in exploring it."
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