IBM has created what it calls an open blueprint for building self-managing IT systems to extend its autonomic computing concept to heterogeneous environments that use computers and servers from multiple vendors. The document provides customers with technical guidelines on how to rope together heterogeneous systems into a working whole that's capable of monitoring and resolving problems with minimal human intervention.

IBM says it will distribute the blueprint throughout the industry free of charge to promote open standards for autonomic computing. The blueprint encourages users to build autonomic environments using emerging, open standards such as the Open Systems Grid Architecture--a standard developed by the Globus Project--and Application Resource Measurement, a standard for measuring software performance.

On Friday, IBM also unveiled tools it says are required for efficient autonomic computing. Its Log & Trace tool is designed to automatically track down the cause of system problems. Its Agent Building and Learning Environment simplifies the algorithms required to create autonomic behavior in computing systems. A new monitoring engine from IBM's Tivoli group is designed to detect resource outages before they bring down an entire system, and a new Tivoli Monitoring and Transaction Performance product will help detect and clear system bottlenecks.

Technology Business Research analyst Bob Sutherland says the moves should help promote the use of autonomic computing in large companies that use heterogeneous IT systems, but that more work is needed. IBM's Director software, one of its primary remote-management tools, still works best only with IBM systems, says Sutherland. "Until they can sit down with HP and Sun and truly optimize their software for competing systems," he says, "this will only go so far in its effectiveness."