My paper on Autonomous Computing is now published on ACM Queue.

ACM members can see it online at ACM Queue: Autonomous Computing.

It is also available for download below.

Autonomous Computing: ACM Queue Jan/Feb 2022

558KB ∙ PDF file

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We frequently compute across autonomous boundaries but the implications of the patterns to ensure independence are rarely discussed.

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• Autonomous Computing Part 1: The Duality of Personal and Shared

  

  • This looks at the intrinsic challenges face by autonomous organizations as the work to provide personal collaborations with their partners yet must manage many shared resources across many partners.

  • Working across boundaries inherently means messaging across time. The long-running collaboration means accepting uncertainty as out business partners may or may not complete the tasks they’ve signed up to do. This interaction of many partners and shared resources necessarily means management of business risk.

  • This video is 41 minutes long.

• Autonomous Computing Part 2: Autonomy Empowers Scale

  

  • Working across boundaries inherently means messaging across time. The long-running collaboration me

  • This presentation considers the information that we must manage inside of an autonomous boundary to support the long-running work for individual business operations AND also for resources being managed to share across many long-running operations.

  • When examining the care and management of these things within the autonomous boundary, we realize that this may be done in a fashion that complies with the patterns laid out in my 2007 CIDR paper: Life Beyond Distributed Transactions. This means that autonomy and its patterns can EMPOWER scalable solutions.
    
    Unfortunately, most implementations do not rigorously follow the path to get scale-agnostic application code while building scalable solutions.

  • This video is 68 minutes long.

• Coming soon: a single video that combines Part 1 and Part 2 without redundant slides.

  • To make the two videos Part 1 and Part 2 stand independently, there is roughly 20 minutes of overlap in content.

  • The planned combined presentation tells both stories in somewhat less time for the listener.

  • I broke them up because the initial combined presentation was almost 90 minutes and seemed overwhelming.

I’ve worked on and off for 23 years thinking about the implications of autonomy on work across boundaries. This paper is an updated version about Autonomous Computing and how it impacts many aspects of business today.

Autonomous Computing

2.15MB ∙ PDF file

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This paper introduces some common features in seen in the pattern of computing across autonomous boundaries:

• Fiefdom: A whimsical name for the boundary of autonomy.

  • “Fiefdom” is an English word for an independent state such as a duchy, barony, earldom, or kingdom.

  • For example, Company-A and Company-B are independent and interact with each other as fiefdoms.

• Collaboration: A formalism of the set of messages used to accomplish a single long-running business operation.

  • For many decades, paper forms correlated long-running work using sequence numbers.

  • This is common today as an application construct to link ongoing work together.

• Emissary: Another whimsical name, this time for code running OUTSIDE the autonomous fiefdom who’s role is to help fill out messages. This pattern is still common with human emissaries (e.g., mortgage brokers helping you get a loan) as well as online shopping with products, and prices used to construct an order.

Based on this pattern, we explore the logical conclusions of how business happens. We conclude with some thoughts:

• There is a relationship between the personal collaborations dedicated to one business partner AND the sharing of resources within the autonomous fiefdom (for example allocating inventory over time).

  • Each partner wants a façade of a personal interaction.

  • Resources managed are shared across many partners.

• The behavior of each piece of the pattern EMPOWERS a scalable system.

  • Back when companies used paper forms, their solution was scalable based on the interaction of long-running work and the resources being managed.

  • We argue that applications CAN BE IMPLEMENTED to scale without significant bounds. This would be true if we were diligent in the implementation of the work.

  • Unfortunately, most implementations today impose artificial constraints on their scale.