Research and development of autonomics have come a long way and we are - lighted to present
the proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Workshop on Modeling Autonomic Communications
Environments (MACE 2009). As in the last three years this workshop was held as part of Manweek
the International Week on Management of Networks and Services which took place in the cult-
ally rich city of Venice in Italy. Manweek is now an umbrella of ?ve workshops and conferences
focusing on di?erent aspects of network and service mana- ment including MACE distributed
operations and management (DSOM) - basedmanagement(IPOM)
towardsmultimediaandmobilenetworks(MMNS) and virtualization and middleware for next generation
networks (NGNM). F- ther information of Manweek and the individual workshops and conferences
can be found atMACE started as an experiment in 2006 and created a small community that now
?nds itself attracted back each year by a feeling of excitement and anticipation to share new
advances and development. Certainly MACE is not as shiny or practiced as other well-known
conferences and workshops but we consider this a feature of the workshop itself. New ideas a
little rough around theedges(andsometimesmorethanalittle) oftenquiteun?nished popoutand provoke
extensive discussion. Science needs this kind of exploratory adventure and we have been
strongly motivated to continue preserving this atmosphere of exploration and discussion in this
year's technical program.
