Special issue on autonomic clouds

Cloud computing continues to grow in complexity due to both the increasing availability of configuration options from public cloud providers and the increasing variability and types of application instances that can be deployed on such platforms. This complexity is also evident in the enterprise-scale datacenters that dominate computing infrastructures in industry, leading to complex business applications and workflows. Autonomic computing enables self-management of systems and applications. The underlying concepts and mechanisms of autonomics can be applied to each component within a cloud (resource manager/scheduler, power manager, and so on) as well as to the cloud as a whole, or they can be applied within an application that makes use of such a cloud. Additionally, autonomics can play a critical role as applications explore dynamic federations of cloud infrastructure and services. This special issue explores the role of autonomic computing concepts and practices in managing cloud infrastructure and applications