Autonomic doesn't mean easy

Autonomic computing, including self-healing systems, won't make the life of IT any easier, at least according to Tom Sheridan, an MIT professor.

I attended a panel yesterday at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, in which Sheridan joined IBM's Alan Ganek, IBM's vice president of autonomic computing, among others.

During the discussion Sheridan said: "Autonomics makes the human role more difficult."

Sheridan explained that human jobs will be more abstract, and will be conducted on a higher level than they are currently. So they will demand more expertise.

IBM's Ganek agreed that more will be required of IT workers, and added that autonomic computing is designed to increase productivity.

"We're not going to automate everybody out of a job, but we have to pay attention to how we'll transform those jobs," said Paul Maglio, who manages human system research at IBM's Almaden labs.