Autonomic computing - panacea or poppycock?

Autonomic computing arose out of a need for a means to cope with rapidly growing complexity of integrating, managing, and operating computer-based systems as well as a need to reduce the total cost of ownership of today's systems. The vision is to create selfware through self-* properties. The initial set of properties, in terms of objectives, were self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting, along with attributes of self-awareness, self-monitoring and self-adjusting. This self-* list has grown: self-anticipating, self-critical, self-defining, self-destructing, self-diagnosis, self-governing, self-organized, self-reflecting, and self-simulation, for instance. We believe that autonomic computing has much to offer in the advancement of complex computer-based systems. We expect to see many additional self-* properties being added to the portfolio of behaviors expected of an autonomic computing system. We anticipate many new biologically-inspired metaphors being developed and incorporated into future autonomic systems.