Think of an Agent as a Cyber Servant	What are Agents? One fascinating emerging technology is Intelligent Agents. Bots and Agents have been called the first indigenous species of cyberspace. They have been part of the Web technologies since the very beginning. The recent progress of intelligent agent technology is the result of a number of independent developments and advances in the related disciplines of distributed computing, object-oriented systems, software engineering, and artificial intelligence.
Agent Definition Nick R. Jennings, a professor at the Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, has written one of the best definitions of what intelligent agents are. He says, "Agents are problem solving systems capable of independent, autonomous action in some environment. Agents must typically take action in the face of partial information and uncertainty both about the environment and about the results that their actions might have. When faced with these difficulties, an agent needs to be able to decide whether its tasks are still appropriate, whether the chosen means of realizing them is likely to succeed, or whether a new course of action should be undertaken instead. In many contexts, agents need to interact with one another to complete or enhance their problem solving. These interactions can take many forms, ranging from simple communication to obtain or share information, through to more elaborate interactions such as cooperation, coordination, and negotiation to achieve individual and collective goals."	Software agents have been part of  Academic research for 3 decades