The Need for Agent Technologies

Manual intervention continues to be a reality in many situations where there is a need to translate policy and make assessments, leading to:

• Potential for human error;
• Inconsistent decision making;
• Delays in responding or executing;
• High cost of compliance audit; and
• Limitations on managing scale and complexity.

While there is no shortage of technology, we remain unable to solve this problem. Rules engines do not operate well in a highly distributed environment where decisions have to be taken at a local and often granular level. SOA can manage any-to-any flow but we have great difficulty pre-thinking all of the potential combinations.

We need new ideas – not new technology. New development efforts must move up the business value chain and deliver solutions to the exception-rich business problems previously beyond IT’s reach.