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The Autonomic Computing Model: DialogTech’s Use Case

Phil Seguin Vice President of Software Development, DialogTech

When a virus enters the human body, the immune system goes to work without being told to do so. As your enzymes and cells march toward an infection, you’re blissfully unaware. You trust your body to do what it knows it has to do and you continue eating your sandwich or riding your bike. What if your computer system could do the same thing? Detect problems and fix them without your direction? Well, some of them can. It’s called the autonomic computing model, and many techies are using elements of it in their systems including us.

Computers are designed to do what you tell them to do. We make decisions and the computer performs the task. This is great for predictability’s sake: we don’t want computers doing things we can’t control or predict–that’s how iRobot happens! But computers with the ability to identify a problem in their own system and take care of the problem without immediately involving an engineer save businesses a significant amount of time and stress.

The autonomic computing model refers to the self-managing characteristics of a system that adapts to unpredictable events and resolves the issue without involving the operator, and it does resemble the human immune system on a basic level.  The system detects a problem and, without requiring human direction, goes and solves that problem.

Like most businesses, we don’t have just one system that does everything. We have hundreds of servers communicating with each other in different ways, sending messages, and sometimes relying on things that we at DialogTech didn’t actually build (partner platforms, etc.). With so much going on, it’s unrealistic to expect an engineer to be available immediately should one of those systems encounter an issue. So, like the human immune system, our platform has a way of addressing those issues without us having to tell it to do so: the autonomic computing model.

The way we use the autonomic computing model isn’t quite like iRobot. Our servers process a massive amount of calls every single day, but rather than our computers fixing any issues without our input, we have put procedures in place that instruct computers to check for known symptoms. If an issue is identified, our engineers don’t have to do anything. That server is automatically isolated and put into a containment chamber. The way our platform is set up, things are able to run perfectly well without that server until it’s able to see the doctor us. Essentially, the system quarantines sick servers without being told, enabling us to heal them at our leisure. Implementing autonomic systems allows our engineers to act as an orchestra conductors, coordinating many different tasks and roles without close intervention

Any engineer will tell you that they have a lot on their plate. Autonomic computing is just one way that platforms like DialogTech use all that technology has to offer in order to keep their systems running and customers’ data secure.