Information technology was invented to compute and hence the focus of the computer lanugage
design was to express the problem more succintly on a host computer. But Primary purpose of
enterprise software is now shifting from computation to implementing systems to coordinate
people, devices and/or other organizations. The change in purpose of these business process IT
systems, from computation to creation of secure systems of record and systems of engagement
calls for new approaches to software. Autonomous Agent technology, repurposes information
technology from the current computation primitves to communication primitives. This make IT
systems more responsive to change in entperprise and will signficantly improve Business - IT
Alignment.
This can be illustrated with an sample business process i.e. Leave Management Process. A typical
Leave management process consists of 4 external observations or business touch-points. The leave
entry, Leave approval (Approve Deny), Notifying HR of approval and notify employee in case it is
denied. These observations appear depending on the role each person plays in the organization. For
example, Leave entry applies for all employees and approval appears only in the manager role and
HR screen only if the person is playing a HR Role. For example, the leave entry is persistently
available. These persistent observations repeat till it is turned off.
These persistent observations are created by packing these repeatable services as agents and then
triggering these agents recursively. Depending on the type of roles, the appropriate agents are
triggered in different user spaces. For example, if the user is an employee, then leave entry agent is
triggered persistently when the user is created. If the user is an approver, then Approval Agent is
turned on when the approver is created. Similarly, the HR agent is turned on when HR user is
created.
Autonomous Agents, makes software simpler and flexible as "Exception Management" ,
"Concurrency Management" and "Storage Management" are completely eliminated. With Agent
technology, it is now possible to deliver same functionality with less lines of code, significantly
reducing effort and increasing quality of information system.