A Cognitive Plane is a decentralised system

Decentralised system

Decentralised systems in systems theory are naturally occurring, usually self-regulating systems found which function without an organized center or authority...

 (e.g. component-ware, multi-agent system

Multi-agent system

A multi-agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve...

, etc) enabling self-management, self-control and self-optimization of network and service platforms. Specifically Cognitive Plane exploits data mining

Data mining

Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...

, reasoning and machine learning

Machine learning

Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...

 algorithms and techniques to extract the knowledge on the status of the network and service platforms. Moreover, Cognitive Plane is in charge of enacting decentralised autonomic behaviours, on the basis of acquired knowledge, to assure (cross-layer, cross-node and cross-network domain) self-management, self-control and self-optimization of resources and applications.