There’s been a lot of media attention in recent years about how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are going to change the world—how they’re going to create new and interesting applications in fields as diverse as education, law, health care and transportation. This may happen. But if I had to bet on a use case where AI and ML will create a tangible, lasting impact, I’m putting my chips on DevOps.
DevOps is all about automation of tasks. Its focus is on automating and monitoring every step of the software delivery process, ensuring that work gets done quickly and frequently. While it doesn’t eliminate human tasks—far from it—it does encourage enterprises to set up repeatable processes that promote efficiency and reduce variability.
AI and ML are perfect fits for a DevOps culture. They can process vast amounts of information and help perform menial tasks, freeing the IT staff to do more targeted work. They can learn patterns, anticipate problems and suggest solutions. If DevOps’ goal is to unify development and operations, AI and ML can smooth out some of the tensions that have divided the two disciplines in the past.
Here are six ways AI and ML can and will change DevOps for the better.
Promoting Feedback on Performance
One of the key tenets of DevOps is the use of continuous feedback loops at every stage of the process. This includes using monitoring tools to provide feedback on the operational performance of running applications. This is one area today where ML is impacting DevOps already. Monitoring platforms gather massive amounts of data in the form of performance metrics, log files and other types. Advanced monitoring platforms are applying machine learning to these datasets to proactively identify problems very early and make recommendations. These recommendations go to the DevOps team members so that they can ensure that the application service remains viable. Machine learning is enhancing the continuous feedback loops that are critical to DevOps.
Enabling Communication
Communication and feedback is always one of the biggest challenges when organizations move to a DevOps methodology. Human interaction is vital, but with so much information flowing through the system, teams need to set up a wider variety of channels to set and revise workflows on the fly. Using automation technology, chatbots and other systems initiated by AI, these communications channels can become more streamlined and more proactive.
Correlate Data Across Platforms and Tools
To operate efficiently, DevOps teams need to simplify tasks. This is getting more difficult as environments get more complex. Start with monitoring tools: Teams tend to use multiple tools that monitor an application’s health and performance in different ways. Machine learning applications can absorb these data streams and find correlations, giving the team a more holistic view of the application’s overall health.
Manage a Flurry of Alerts
Since DevOps encourages teams to “fail but fail fast,” it’s critical to have an alert system that spots a flaw quickly. This tends to create scenarios where alerts are coming fast and furious, all labeled with the same severity, making it difficult for teams to react. Machine learning applications can help teams prioritize their responses based on factors such as past behavior, the magnitude of the current alert and the source that specific alerts are coming from. Humans can set up rules, but machines can help manage these types of situations when too much data overwhelms the system.
Evaluating Past Performance
AI/ML also has the potential to help developers during the application creation process. By examining the success of past applications in terms of build/compile success, successful testing completion and operational performance, machine learning algorithms could make recommendations to developers proactively based on the code they are writing or the application that they are building. The AI engine could direct the developer in how to build the most efficient and highest-quality application.
Software Testing
In the future, we could see AI/ML applied to other stages of the software development life cycle to provide enhancements to a DevOps methodology or approach. One area where this may happen could be in the area of software testing. Unit tests, regression tests, functional tests and user acceptance tests all produce large amounts of data in the form of test results. Applying AI or machine learning algorithms to these test results could identify patterns of poor coding practices that result in too many errors caught by the tests. This information could then inform the development teams so that they can become more efficient in the future.
Similarly, leveraging historical data, AI/ML could be used to fine-tune deployment strategies as applications are moved from Dev to Test to Production environments.
