Systems/Enterprise:

FUJITSU, IBM TO PROMOTE OPEN STANDARDS FOR AUTONOMIC COMPUTING

Fujitsu Limited and IBM announced that they have agreed to collaborate on autonomic computing standards. Initial areas of collaboration are expected to include existing or new standardization efforts related to the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Event Format, standardization of a set of actions to manage IT resources, and standards related to software installation and deployment.

Autonomic computing technologies allow complex IT infrastructures to become more self-managing, greatly reducing system management burdens so IT professionals can concentrate on business issues and innovation. By automating various tasks -- for example, detecting system problems or decreased performance due to sudden increases in access or processing loads, and making corrective action such as adding servers or other resources -- all without human intervention, autonomic technologies enable more reliable, flexible and manageable IT systems.

Fujitsu, IBM and other companies have been pursuing autonomic computing technologies on their own, but in order to enjoy the benefits of these technological advances in heterogeneous systems environments, it is critical to promote autonomic computing standards that enable multi-vendor interoperability. Fujitsu's and IBM's new collaboration aims to advance this important effort.

As part of the collaboration, Fujitsu will support and promote together with IBM the WSDM event format based on IBM's proposal of the Common Base Event format, which was submitted to the OASIS standards body. This format is envisioned as the basis for identifying and resolving problems autonomically in a heterogeneous IT systems environment and would facilitate more seamless interoperability of each company's products.

In addition to promoting the exploitation of the WSDM Event Format, Fujitsu and IBM have been drafting specifications to define management capabilities and operations for IT resource management in a multi-vendor systems environment. The companies intend to submit the specifications to appropriate standards bodies.

Fujitsu and IBM will also work on supporting additional standardization efforts, including those on software installation and deployment, and efforts associated with integrated consoles.

"Autonomic computing standards are key to enabling the interoperability of multiple vendors' products in heterogeneous IT environments," said Yoshiyuki Tanakura, corporate vice president of Fujitsu Limited, "and we are pleased to join with IBM in advancing this important effort. Along with virtualization and integration, autonomic technologies are a key pillar of our TRIOLE strategy for IT infrastructure optimization, and we will leverage this and other expertise we've accumulated in delivering mission-critical enterprise platform solutions while we work with IBM to promote open standards for autonomic computing."

"Open standards are an essential ingredient for building autonomic systems," said Alan Ganek, vice president of Autonomic Computing at IBM. "We are delighted to collaborate with Fujitsu to lay the foundation for self-managing solutions that will help customers respond more quickly in an on demand business."

Through their collaborative efforts with standardization bodies, Fujitsu and IBM will promote the industry-wide adoption of autonomic computing standards, which will enable vendors to develop autonomic systems with assured interoperability and less development and validation costs. Amid the increasing interconnectedness of IT and business, the companies' collaboration in this endeavor will accelerate the realization of advanced IT systems that can quickly sense and appropriately deal with changing conditions.