Microsoft rolls out autonomic plan

Microsoft last week detailed a software architecture that helps corporate and third-party developers create applications with autonomic capabilities that are designed to take advantage of existing IT infrastructures more efficiently.

The company’s DSI (Dynamic Systems Initiative) is, in part, an attempt to counter the self-healing, self-managing technologies from archrivals IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun. Microsoft officials, however, see DSI as more of a preventative medicine approach to fixing ailing IT infrastructures by making new applications automatically work in concert with their environments.

Some observers think the DSI is heading in the right direction but do not think it is a new concept.

“The notion of the best problem you can have is one that doesn’t occur is not a unique one to Microsoft. I think it is also the focus of IBM, Sun, and HP to design out problems. Microsoft has some support from Dell, HP, and Opsware on this, but I’d like to see them more fully disclose the technical details,” said Stephen O’Grady, an analyst at RedMonk in Hollis, N.H.

Microsoft officials last week felt confident that the approach they are taking with DSI will separate the company from those competitors also seeking the autonomic Holy Grail.

“We see the IBM-Sun-HP approaches as ones looking from the outside in, where they identify your system’s illness and then make it well. Our focus is to build a more dynamic infrastructure where the systems are a union of the infrastructure and application working together,” said Bob O’Brien, Windows Server group product manager at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

At the center of the DSI initiative, which O’Brien said could extend over the next three to five years, is the SDM (System Definition Model), which will serve as an XML-based blueprint that can identify and then unify the fundamental operational requirements of applications with datacenter policies. It functions as a “contract” between development, deployment, and operations across an IT life cycle.

The SDM will influence the design and development of all of Microsoft’s enterprise products and those of their business partners beginning with the delivery next month of its long-awaited Windows Server 2003 on April 24. It will also be supported in upcoming releases of the company’s Visual Studio tools, company officials said.

IBM officials believe that their company’s autonomic effort, formerly code-named Project eLiza, carries more strategic weight given that it addresses the technical complexities of multiplatform environments, not just Windows, and that it encompasses a wide range of both system platforms and applications.

“To us, DSI is focusing on the application level and neglecting the rest of the solutions stack. We are trying to build an autonomic computing system from top to bottom. Plus their solution is based on a proprietary environment and underestimates the value of legacy systems in place now,” said Mike Loughran, a representative of Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM.

Microsoft last week also shipped a beta version of its ADS (Automated Deployment Services) for Windows Server 2003, designed to reduce the time it takes to deploy hundreds of Windows Server system images. Company officials said the product would deploy such images in minutes instead of days.

What inspired the new architecture, which has its roots in Microsoft’s research labs as far back as the mid-1990s, according to O’Brien, is what the company perceives as existing infrastructures’ lack of capability for handling increasing complexity and costs.

Microsoft officials last week cited a recent Accenture study, which states that 70 percent of IT spending goes toward keeping existing systems and platforms running — an indication of how strained current infrastructures are. Only 30 percent is spent on new technologies.

“We think this shows a fundamental breakdown in today’s automation architectures,” O’Brien contended.