Evolutionary Computing and Autonomic Computing: Shared Problems, Shared Solutions?

The purpose of this paper is to present evolutionary computing (EC) and to identify a number of issues where EC and autonomic computing, a.k.a. self-*, are mutually relevant for each other. We show that Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) form a metaheuristic that can be used to tackle the problem of self-optimisation in autonomic systems and suggest that an evolutionary approach can also help solving other challenges in autonomic computing. Meanwhile, an evolving system can be seen as a special case of an autonomic system. From this perspective, the quest for parameterless EAs can be positioned in a broader context and it can be expected that some solutions invented within autonomic computing can be transferred to EC.