IBM enlists services unit in self-healing push

IBM has begun a consulting practice around its autonomic computing technology to automatically fix performance glitches.

The company said Thursday that its IBM Global Services (IGS) division has developed a service to help customers root out problems that occur in complex systems involving computing gear from different vendors.

IBM also said it plans to release an upgrade to its IBM Autonomic Toolkit in the third quarter this year, which will speed up processing of large amounts of system performance information.

Through its autonomic computing initiative, IBM has sought to create software and set standards to make computing systems more self-managing. Since the initiative's launch four years ago, IBM has contributed things such as error reporting formats to standards bodies and signed on a number of partners.

The "problem determination" service from IGS is one of several that IBM intends to offer, said David Bartlett, vice president of autonomic computing for IBM. The company has already done pilot projects with customers, he said.

"We're going to leverage our massive Global Services organization to bring this to customers," Bartlett said. "That's how we're scaling this out."

IBM consultants will use autonomic software and implementation techniques in customer engagements to correct glitches that occur in corporate data centers, Bartlett said.

Customers will be able to spot and automatically correct problems by correlating log data from many different devices, such as hardware servers and routers, he said.

Another IGS offering under the autonomic rubric will use IBM's Tivoli provisioning software to efficiently run mySAP applications. The service will recommend how customers can automatically bring servers online to handle a spike in processing demand, according to IBM.