Research and development challenges for agend-based systems

The increasing sophistication of today's information era poses certain challenges to traditional information technology (IT) systems. Agent-based software technology is rapidly evolving to meet the demands of this new information era. However, before agent-based solutions can be routinely and successfully exploited in real world problems, first, certain fundamental research and software engineering issues have to be addressed. In this paper, we discuss some of the key challenges for research and development of agent-based software systems. Our discussion is carried out from the twin viewpoints of fundamental research questions and software engineering issues.