You have to give IBM credit for vision.

A couple of years ago, the company--already a leader in Web services and grid computing--cooked up the concept of "autonomic computing," which describes systems that behave like multicellular organisms--adapting to changing conditions and even healing themselves.

Because the drudgery required to maintain today's data centres is becoming so prohibitive, IBM argues that we have no choice but to develop technology that takes care of itself. It's hard to find fault with the spirit of that statement. And as Tech Update's Bill O'Brien noted in a recent column, with the eLiza initiative, IBM is already laying the groundwork for autonomy, rolling out beta versions of network self-management software and delivering eServers that isolate and fix hardware problems.

Unfortunately, though, there are already signs that the phrase "autonomic computing" may soon be applied as promiscuously as "artificial intelligence" once was. Take the example of IBM's forthcoming DB2 8 database, released in a test version last week. Much emphasis was put on the self-healing features of the new Health Centre console, which monitors memory use in the data engine, including sort heaps, buffer pools, and caches. The Health Centre will even page an administrator if it senses memory problems.

Those are great features. But are they autonomic?

Not according to Robert Shimp, vice president of Oracle 9i database marketing, who claims that Oracle database software has had functionality similar to that of DB2's Health Centre for years. In addition, Shimp says Oracle has almost completely automated performance tuning in the latest revision of its database software.

Database tuning and maintenance are great examples of laborious jobs better handled by smart software--but does handling them fall under the rubric of autonomic computing or just good software design? Shimp, for one, would argue the latter. If you study the eLiza fact sheet, you'll even find ECC memory listed as an autonomic feature. Why not put the steam-engine governor on there, too?

In fact, IBM's problem is the usual time gap between dream and reality. IBM's vision requires it to retool much of its hardware and software--a process likely to take years. Meanwhile, the company is left to announce autonomic bits and pieces until all the products roll out, fit together, and begin managing themselves collectively. But hyping a feature here and a product there does autonomic computing a disservice. Particularly since IBM already showed how sophisticated things can get with its Project Oceano demo last year, where a small Linux server farm automatically reallocated resources by changing Web servers into application servers and back again.

Vernon Turner, an IDC expert on autonomic computing, believes the key benefit of this technology is precisely this sort of resource provisioning. I got a sense of what he meant when I spoke with Ed Denison, director of global operations for CSC, the world's third-largest data centre outsourcing company. "Instead of taking four to six to eight hours to build a box from tape or from scratch or whatever, if you have capacity in the farm, you can image the box in 30 minutes," says Denison. "A guy sits down for 10 or 15 minutes, pushes the right buttons, goes and does something else ... and he's completely rebuilt the server."

It's interesting to note that Denison wasn't talking about IBM products, but instead evaluating software from a startup called Terraspring, which focuses on what it calls automated resource management. The supplier of the code upon which Hewlett-Packard built its Utility Data Centre offering, Terraspring sells software that wraps around any infrastructure you happen to have, rather than looking for special hardware features from a particular vendor. Think Dynamics, Platform Computing, and other so-called autonomic startups follow a similar line.

As usual, IBM is providing strong intellectual leadership. It sees provisioning and optimisation as only half the picture, though, with the other half including self-healing and security. But while IBM assembles its complex mosaic, more nimble companies will rush in to salve data centre pain points with technology that virtualizes resources and automatically adapts to the needs of applications.

Meanwhile, expect not only IBM, but everyone and their brother to pin the "autonomic" label on everything from mainframe operating systems to self-timing coffeemakers.

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