The Redmond software giant plans to formally announce its "Dynamic Systems Initiative" next week. The new effort is similar to others already under way at competitors, such as IBM's "autonomic computing" initiative.
The central idea for all these efforts is that companies' networks should be able to monitor themselves, shift processing power and dedicate storage where and when it's needed. By instructing the networks to manage themselves, system administrators will be freed up to focus on other business matters, rather than baby-sitting the network.
Microsoft's initiative focuses on new technologies to create and support "smart" programs that know how to anticipate such needs, said Bob O'Brien, Microsoft's Windows Server group product manager. For example, every time someone places an order on a Web site, the underlying program can be instructed to make a certain amount of storage available.
"If the application knows ... what kind of resources it will need, it starts to see that work load increase, [then] it knows how many resources to put on," he said.
In addition, Microsoft is working with hardware manufacturers to deliver infrastructure that works seamlessly with these applications.
Windows Server 2003, Microsoft's newest server software scheduled for release next month, will include some of the technology. Another component will be available later this year and Microsoft expects to release more tools in the next three to five years, O'Brien said.
IBM announced its "autonomic computing" initiative about 18 months ago.
"The complexity of technology is growing exponentially," said IBM spokesman Michael Loughran. "[The goal is] to have [information technology] people focus on the business and not focus on the actual infrastructure anymore."
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