Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, October 27, 2003 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Alan Ganek

"The Next Era of Computing: Autonomic Computing"

ABSTRACT -- As the preeminent mathematician Alfred Whitehead once said, "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." This is the crux of the next era of computing: making computers and their labyrinthine networks and devices smarter and easier to use, enabling important computer operations to run requiring significantly less human intervention than is required today. IBM's autonomic computing initiative focuses on delivering far more self-managing computer systems, ones that will regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system regulates and protects our bodies. This direction will introduce intelligence into computer systems and software, enabling IT administrative and operations personnel to be far more productive and creative.

Autonomic computing represents a "grand challenge" in computing, and complete realization of the vision will be an evolutionary process. Nevertheless, this direction is beginning to provide substantive benefits with many products and features already available, and exciting technology advances are under development. Alan Ganek, Vice President of Autonomic Computing for IBM, will discuss the vision of autonomic computing, the technologies and products behind it, business benefits, and challenges that lie ahead.

SPEAKER -- Mr. Ganek leads the IBM Corporate-wide initiative for autonomic computing, which focuses on making computing systems more self-managing and resilient, lowering the cost of ownership and removing obstacles to growth and flexibility. The activity includes leadership in architecture, technology, and standards as well as business and market planning. The focus is on increasing the competitiveness of IBM products and services with the infusion of autonomic computing capabilities, and ensuring that this work is fully linked with consistent, open architecture and standards. A major emphasis is establishing industry wide standards to enable multi-vendor solutions that enable Autonomic Computing capabilities for customers.

Mr. Ganek received his M.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers University in 1981. He holds fifteen patents.