Autonomic toolkit covers management, problem determination IBM launched the Autonomic Computing Toolkit to help developers build autonomic elements into their systems last week.Based on the Eclipse open source framework, the toolkit contains embeddable components, tools, usage scenarios, and documentation, IBM said.The components cover four key areas. The Autonomic Management Engine monitors the application, identifies any problems, and decides what should be done to correct them, while the Integrated Solutions Console allows a company’s IT administration to be monitored and run centrally over a Web-based infrastructure. The Solution Installation and deployment technologies are core to autonomic computing, spotting interdependencies between applications to reduce installation and configuration problems.The fourth component group, Problem Determination technologies, includes features designed to speed up analysis of the root cause of problems.There is, as yet, no standard for self-healing technology, as the area is still developing, and this means that companies such as IBM and Microsoft are developing in very different directions, said IDC analyst Chris Ingle. Microsoft, for instance, aims to develop self-healing, autonomic computing within its Visual Studio.“There needs to be some unification, as everyone’s releasing different things. There are groups trying to establish standards, but it’s what gets deployed first that becomes the standard,” Ingle said. Software Development