As a rapidly growing field, Autonomic Computing is a promising new approach for developing large scale distributed systems. However, while the vision of achieving self-management in computing systems is well established, the field still lacks a commonly accepted definition of ‘what’ an Autonomic Computing system is. Without a common definition to dictate the direction of development, it is not possible to know whether a system or technology is a part of Autonomic Computing, or if in fact an Autonomic Computing system has already been built.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a standardised and quantitative definition of Autonomic Computing through the application of the Quality Metrics Framework described in IEEE Std 1061-1998 [1]. Through the application of this methodology, stakeholders were systematically analysed and evaluated to obtain a balanced and structured definition of Autonomic Computing. This definition allows for further development and implementation of quality metrics, which are project-specific, quantitative measurements that can be used to validate the success of future Autonomic Computing projects.