SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Complexity is becoming a major issue for all IT departments, whether acknowledged or not. Many CIOs are still in denial. This is not industry hype; rather it is reality. Complexity is not just an academic theory, since it has emerged into the IT world. Complexity in IT increases costs and affects productivity. This is a new threat to progress and future success that must be addressed. There is no future in the status quo. To let IT infrastructures and architectures become increasingly complex with no action is unacceptable and irresponsible. If the eventual solution is to throw more skilled programmers and others at this problem, it is clear that chaos will be the order of the day. Reliability and performance of critical corporate applications will be called into question. Confidence in the IT department, already battered in the past, will be the next issue on senior management's checklist. Until IT vendors solve the problem of complexity, the same problems will be repeated and continue to plague the industry. There is no way that these complexities can be managed through skilled staff alone, even if they are available. Corporations and forward-thinking CIOs should start with a complexity reduction management policy. This policy will set out an approach for dealing with complexity and present solutions, such as autonomous computing. The management, and ultimate reduction, of complexity and a move to simpler solutions will not be easily achieved. Consider the boxed quote from IBM's Alan Ganek. In the IT industry, we are operating in one of the most difficult and complex business environments that any of us have participated in during our business careers, and it is vital that we address complexity NOW. The Autonomic Goal Is One of Simplicity. "The goal is to increase the amount of automation that businesses need to sustain. Because the more that you can get human error out of the loop, the more efficient your business will become—whether you are a financial institution, a shipping company, or an online retailer. The beauty of it is that all of these complexities are hidden from the user." —Alan Ganek, the Vice President of Autonomic Computing for IBM Corporation's Software Group[3] | [3] See www.eetimes.com/issue/fp/OEG20020412S0056. |