There are a number of practical reasons for this. In the months ahead I will explore a number of distributed computing issues facing IT managers. James Odell, a leading expert in OO Analysis and Design, is contributing to OT Land with a series of articles on Agents Technology. Throughout most of his 30 year career, he has been heavily involved in developing better methods to manage, understand, and express business system requirements. James Odell is also the co-chair of OMG's Agent SIG as well as the Analysis and Design Task Force.
Agents can work as noninteractive individuals or as a collective.
As a collective, however, something new and different can result. Complexity is all around us. Complexity is caused by the collective behavior of many basic interacting agents. Such agents can produce everyday phenomenon such as ant colonies, traffic jams, stock markets, forest ecosystems, and supply chain systems. Complex systems, however, do not have to complicated.