Patent ID: 7233935

Claim:
A system, comprising: a processor; and a memory comprising program instructions, wherein the program instructions are executable by the processor to implement a policy-based automation mechanism configured to evaluate policies to provide automated computer system administration in an information technology (IT) environment, wherein each policy specifies a set of one or more rules and a process to be automatically initiated in the IT environment dependent upon an evaluation of the policy, and wherein, to evaluate policies, the policy-based automation mechanism is configured to: access a policy and information relevant to an evaluation of the policy; evaluate the same policy according to the information using two or more different inference techniques to generate a positive or negative answer as to whether a process specified by the policy is to be automatically initiated and a confidence level for the positive or negative answer; initiate the process specified by the policy in the IT environment if the positive or negative answer and the confidence level indicate that the process is to be initiated; and not initiate the process specified by the policy in the IT environment if the positive or negative answer and the confidence level indicate that the process is not to be initiated.