Autonomic Computing is a promising new concept in system development. It aims to (i) increase reliability by designing systems to be self-protecting and self-healing; and (ii) increase autonomy and performance by enabling systems to adapt to changing circumstances, using self-configuring and self-optimizing mechanisms. This paper discusses the type of system architecture needed to support such objectives.

This paper upon looking at the Autonomic Computing architecture and Grid Computing highlights the importance of health check mechanisms to achieve a reflex-healing duel strategy. This will provide new design options for the development of the Autonomic Grid. The resulting pulse monitor is based on extending the existing Grid heart-beat monitor with urgency or anxiety levels such as that used in the NASA beacon monitor. The paper concludes with a discussion that this health check mechanism may be utilized in the future to achieve the necessary sense of urgency within a system for affect and emotion intelligence.

Autonomic Computing is emerging as a significant new approach to the design of computing systems. Its goal is the development of systems that are selfconfiguring, self-healing, self-protecting and selfoptimizing. Dependability is a long-standing desirable property of all computer-based systems. The purpose of this paper is to consider how Autonomic Computing can provide a framework for dependability.

The objective of this paper is to discuss why computer-based systems should be autonomic, where autonomicity implies self-managing, often conceptualized in terms of being self-configuring, selfhealing, self-optimising, self-protecting and self-aware. We look at motivations for autonomicity, examine how more and more systems are exhibiting autonomic behavior, and finally look at future directions.

The overall goal of this research is to improve the `environment awareness' aspect of personal autonomic computing. Personal Computing offers unique challenges for self-management due to its multiequipment, multi-situation, and multi-user nature. The aim is to develop a support architecture for multiplatform working, based on autonomic computing concepts and techniques. Of particular interest is collaboration among personal systems to take a shared responsibility for environment awareness. Concepts mirroring human mechanisms, such as 'reflex reactions' and the use of 'vital signs' to assess operational health, are used in designing and implementing the personal computing architecture. A proof of concept self-healing tool is considered and lessons learned used for the requirements specification of the community-based environment awareness prototype environment---PACMEN (Personal Autonomic Computing Monitor ENvironment).

Autonomic Computing (AC), self-management based on high level guidance from humans, is increasingly gaining momentum as the way forward in designing reliable systems that hide complexity and conquer IT management costs. Effectively, AC may be viewed as Policy-Based SelfManagement. We look at ways to achieve this, and in particular focus on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering. We propose utilizing an AOSE methodology for specifying autonomic and autonomous properties of the system independently, and later, by means of composition of these specifications, to construct a specification for the policy and its subsequent deployment.

Business Grids are envisioned to become the adaptive service-oriented utility infrastructure for arbitrary business application satisfying the needs for agility and cost efficiency in today’s and tomorrow’s ever changing business environment. This industrial report paper discusses the main areas that contribute to this vision, namely Grid computing, autonomic computing and virtualization technologies. Furthermore, it shows how they relate to each other.

Abstract. The emerging complexity in computing systems, services and applications requires the system/software architectures to be adaptive in all their attributes and functionalities. Developing a more intelligent computing system—autonomic computing system—which can run autonomously and adjust itself to the varying circumstances becomes the new major task for many system designers and system developers. The goal of this paper is to present an overview about autonomic computing including its properties, background and general architecture.

The four key objective properties of a system that are required for it to qualify as “autonomic ” are now wellaccepted––self-configuring, self-healing, self-protecting, and self-optimizing––together with the attribute properties––viz. self-aware, environment-aware, selfmonitoring and self-adjusting. This paper describes these self- * properties as exhibited in NASA missions, and in particular with reference to a NASA concept mission, ANTS, which is illustrative of future NASA exploration based on the technology of intelligent swarms.

Greater understanding of biology in modern times has enabled significant breakthroughs in improving healthcare, quality of life, and eliminating many diseases and congenital illnesses. Simultaneously there is a move towards emulating nature and copying many of the wonders uncovered in biology, resulting in “biologically inspired ” systems. Significant results have been reported in a wide range of areas, with systems inspired by nature enabling exploration, communication, and advances that were never dreamed possible just a few years ago. We warn, that as in many other fields of endeavor, we should be inspired by nature and biology, not engage in mimicry. We describe some results of biological inspiration that augur promise in terms of improving the safety and security of systems, and in developing self-managing systems, that we hope will ultimately lead to selfgoverning systems. 1.