Telecommunication systems have long enjoyed high levels of availability owing to the existence of a control plane. Software only solutions for server management have been available for many years, where observations are made on the server and processed on a central management station. Delegation of management decision making has not been fully realized. This paper describes the design of a true autonomic element where a card is inserted into a PCI slot and controls the server through communication using PCI, IPMI and network interfaces. A description of a number of management scenarios, the architecture of the autonomic engine and how the lifecycle of delegated decision making is managed is provided.