Editing Autonomic computing (section)

==Problem of growing complexity==
Forecasts suggested that the computing devices in use would grow at 38% per year<ref name="IBM1">{{cite web|last=Horn |title=Autonomic Computing:IBM's Perspective on the State of Information Technology |url=http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/manifesto/autonomic_computing.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110916160342/http://www.research.ibm.com/autonomic/manifesto/autonomic_computing.pdf |archive-date=September 16, 2011 }}</ref> and the average complexity of each device was increasing.<ref name="IBM1"/> This volume and complexity was managed by highly skilled humans; but the demand for skilled IT personnel was already outstripping supply, with labour costs exceeding equipment costs by a ratio of up to 18:1.<ref>'Trends in technology', survey, Berkeley University of California, USA, March 2002</ref> Computing systems have brought great benefits of speed and automation but there is now an overwhelming economic need to automate their maintenance.

In a 2003 [[IEEE]] ''[[Computer (magazine)|Computer]]'' article, Kephart and Chess<ref name="Kephart"/>
warn that the dream of interconnectivity of computing systems and devices could become the "nightmare of [[pervasive computing]]" in which architects are unable to anticipate, design and maintain the [[complexity]] of interactions. They state the essence of autonomic computing is system self-management, freeing administrators from low-level task management while delivering better system behavior.

A general problem of modern [[Distributed systems|distributed computing systems]] is that their [[complexity]], and in particular the complexity of their management, is becoming a significant limiting factor in their further development. Large companies and institutions are employing large-scale [[computer network]]s for communication and computation. The distributed applications running on these computer networks are diverse and deal with multiple 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 [[laptop]]s, [[personal digital assistant]]s, or [[mobile phones]] with diverse forms of [[wireless]] technologies to access their companies' data.

This creates an enormous complexity in the overall computer network which is hard to control manually by human operators. Manual control is time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone. The manual effort needed to control a growing networked computer-system tends to increase quickly.

80% of such problems in infrastructure happen at the client specific application and database layer.{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} Most 'autonomic' service providers{{Who|date=July 2010}} guarantee only up to the basic plumbing layer (power, hardware, [[operating system]], network and basic database parameters).