Using Terraspring’s solution, Denison estimates that he could save as much as $300 per month in labor costs per server. For customers such as J.P. Morgan Chase, for which CSC maintains 16,000 servers, that’s hardly chump change. And Denison sees an opportunity to dramatically increase the number of servers his administrators can handle over the long haul. "Normally you get 18 servers per administrator," says Denison. "Our goal is to get closer to 40 or 80 or 100."

Enabling the Future

Listening to the needs of IT execs such as Denison was the main impetus behind IBM’s autonomic computing initiative, according to Van Symons, global marketing executive for eLiza. But the company has loftier goals in mind than merely reducing IT head count.

In IBM’s view, the autonomic data center goes hand in glove with the company’s "grid computing" initiative, in which distributed networks of data centers can be virtualized to work as a single computer. Although largely confined to scientific applications so far, grid computing for commercial applications may one day enable the "utility" or "service" model of computing, where customers will tap into computing power much as they plug in a toaster and tap into the electric power grid today. The ultimate goal, according to Wladawsky-Berger, is to turn the Internet into one giant virtual computer.

Who knows, however, when such grand concepts will touch the ground. Meanwhile, IBM deserves credit for reminding us that the flood of fabulous new IP-based technology that has arrived in the past few years is worth very little if you can’t make it work without breaking the bank. Worse, if we spend too much time scrambling to shore up what’s already been deployed, we’ll stop forging ahead. As Symons says, the cost savings promised by autonomic computing isn’t the only attraction. "The real benefit is the speed with which I can now deliver more applications?and not spend all my time building and managing the infrastructure," he says.