There is concern that the widespread use AI will lead to job elimination, including for IT professionals. But Rajeswari Koppala, senior manager of DevOps at United Airlines, says automation presents new opportunities for everyone, including employees in her department.
“I’m an automation evangelist,” she said. “I think if you use it right, you can do wonders. There’s a lot of scope where we can use AI and machine learning tools to optimize what we’re doing. “
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In the case of United, Koppala introduced automation through its Mining software development platform, which uses AI to simplify DevOps processes and support continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/ CD).
This technology has accelerated software deployment cycles by 75% and reduced the build process from 22 minutes to just 5 minutes, allowing IT professionals to focus on higher-value tasks, such as such as creating new services to meet business requirements.
Instead of spending hours provisioning infrastructure and handling repetitive operational requirements, United IT staff can get on with what they do best — developing and deploying applications. use.
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Other companies are taking a similar approach, with research from Stonebranch showing increased use of AI and automation in the whole IT industry is a common trend. More than four-fifths (81%) of organizations plan to grow their automation program by 2023, and 86% plan to replace or add a new automation platform.
That is certainly the case for forex specialist Travelex, where assistant vice president Mayank Goswami is overseeing the use of the CI/CD platform from technology specialist CircleCI to automate the software deployment process across multiple platforms. environment.
This platform allows Travelex to deploy standardized development patterns quickly, rather than having to set up new infrastructure in every location around the globe.
Goswami said the implementation of the CircleCI platform is part of a larger shift towards Agile and DevOps in the enterprise, and IT professionals shouldn’t worry about the growing use of automation as part of the process. development process.
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“Change is inevitable,” he said. “Technology changes at least every two or three years and maybe faster. You can’t just stick to what you know. You have to learn. If you see change as an opportunity, that’s how you can do it. exist in the IT industry.”
The end result of increased automation, says Goswami, is greater efficiency and a better way of working for everyone.
“When people work together and they are focusing on the larger business goal and doing everything to achieve that goal gradually through automation and the use of DevOps methods and tools, I think that’s where the real benefits come from,” he said.
Koppala also believes that IT professionals shouldn’t worry too much about the rise of automation. New technology offers new opportunities for operational efficiency. She gives an example of automating the deployment process.
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“If you’ve learned something from the work you’ve done — and created models that can use the knowledge already in the system — that can be of great benefit.”
However, it’s important to realize that, while automation can improve efficiency and reduce the number of repetitive tasks in IT, there are limits to what can be achieved. .
Koppala says integrating automation into software development and deployment processes is a great first step, but it’s just one stage in a much longer journey.
“Over the years, automation has been a constant struggle within the organization because any DevOps or platform engineering team tends to create automation for the use cases they know at. that time,” she said.
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Going beyond that — and adding intelligence to automation, to be able to reduce manual intervention as use cases change — is where United wants to head next.
Koppala says increasing the amount of intelligence in the software development process is one of her team’s main goals over the next two years. And she looks forward to artificial intelligence to play a big role.
“As the use case changes, automation doesn’t work — and the team needs to get involved and do the manual work. So how do you build intelligent automation that handles fields Use case you don’t know about? It’s a space where you can use AI and ML models and I’m really optimistic about their role in the future.”
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Like Koppala, Goswami also hopes to start seeing an increasing amount of automation in DevOps environments.
He says it’s too early for Travelex when it comes to getting into AI, especially for creation toolsuch as ChatGPT.
However, Goswami and his colleagues are wise enough to keep a close eye on the rapid development of AI.
“All of these emerging technologies are in our sights to see if there’s anything that delivers business value from the customer’s point of view.”
Back at United, Koppala said her team has been investigating nascent AI developments, including a feature in the Mining platform called Continuous Verification, using real-time, semi-supervised. machine learning (ML) to model and predict service behavior.
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The goal, she says, is to integrate the deployment process with monitoring capabilities. Then, if something goes wrong when a new service is deployed, ML-led technology can automatically intervene, which means business-critical applications will continue to run.
“For example, let’s say I’m rolling out today, it’s up and running and everything is fine,” she said. “But what if, after two days of deployment, the service’s performance starts to drop and no one notices right away?”
That’s where Continuous Verification fills the gap — technology that continuously monitors service performance and automatically takes proactive action, says Koppala.
“As soon as the performance of the service degrades, this rollout is triggered to roll back to the previous version, which was working fine,” she said. “So it’s kind of self-healing – it’s an intelligence-led tool that benefits people.”
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Those kinds of pluses mean that Koppala and her senior management colleagues at United are keen to look at how AI can help drive a broader range of software development and deployment processes.
She recognizes that introducing other AI tools is “a bigger journey altogether.” Again, however, some significant progress is being made, including the evaluation of an AI-based tool that shows the impact of infrastructure changes before they go live. motion.
“We’re not there yet, we’re still working on that,” said Koppala, reiterating that emerging technology will continue to play an increasing role in the working lives of companies. United IT and development specialist.
“That’s our goal for the next two years,” she said. “We wanted to close that space and leverage the right tools.”
