IBM Technology Simplifies Autonomic Computing

IBM has delivered new technology to help developers build software solutions for installation on a variety of platforms.

The new self-configuring technology helps developers create autonomic computing applications, the company said.

The new Solution Installation for Autonomic Computing technology will be on display at the Rational user conference in Dallas this week. The technology enables users to simplify the process of packaging software and improve installation and support processes, said David Bartlett, director of customer and partner programs for autonomic computing at IBM.

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In addition, IBM, Novell Inc. and others joined to submit the specification to the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, for adoption as a standard. InstallShield Software Corp. and Zero G Software Inc. are joint authors of the proposal.

“The challenge with enterprise products is we’re trying to reduce a lot of the mundane stuff with autonomic computing,” Bartlett said.

“This is targeted at the developer,” he said. “It provides a consistent methodology for doing software packaging—to allow automation of that install instead of manually having to sort that out as a customer.”

Bartlett said the group developed an XML-based schema they submitted to the W3C, “and now we’ll form a working group to continue to work on that effort and get a practical implementation of it.”

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