Container, DevOps, and Generative AI for Testing Usage

My work sponsored an IDC paper going over ways to use generative AI (and ML) at various stages of software development (the “Application Development and Product Life-Cycle Management”). There’s some interesting ideas in there, you should check them out.

As always, I like to collect the numbers from surveys and estimates. There’s some good ones in there! Here they are:

• “26% of organizations are using GenAI to support application development, testing, and management and 25% are utilizing machine learning with the greatest focus on leveraging AI to support DevOps analytics and process, governance, and security testing”

• “32% of application portfolios are built on containers and microservices today and, in five years [2028?], enterprises estimate that 39% of their portfolios will be built on containers and microservices” // I’m always after how many apps/workloads are running in Kubernetes. This is a new one! IDC’s numbers here don’t tell you which are running in production versus just in dev/test, but, whatever. Also, it’s “containers and microservices,” not just containers. // These are different estimates than a recent Gartner one: “By 2027, 25% of all enterprise applications will run in containers, an increase from fewer than 10% in 2021.”1 But, given that IDC’s is containers and microservices, maybe if you throw out microservices that are not running in containers, the IDC and Gartner numbers would be closer. I think the beers after work estimate, then, is something like: I don’t know, I’d guess companies are running something like 10% to 20% of their apps in Kubernetes? 20% seems, high - I mean, I just read the other day that 71% of developers don’t automate their builds and testing, right? So, who knows what’s going in enterprises. Anyway…want another beer?”

• “[E]nterprises are using DevOps methodologies to manage roughly 35% of their application portfolio today, with the anticipation of using DevOps to manage more than 47% of their portfolios in five years” // This seems like a better estimate than the headline one in the CD Foundation survey I looked at yesterday, which was (I don’t know the surveying name for this) synthetic conclusion based on the tools and practices people use, not the saying “we do the DevOps.” // Also, they’ll be spreading to 10% more of there portfolio over five years, to just under 50% of their portfolio under management. Change takes a long time! If we put the invention of DevOps as “[a]round 2007 and 2008,” we’re 16 to 17 years into DevOps and creeping towards 40% adoption. Probably fine, actually. It also shows you why we’re still talking about DevOps all these years later, and why there’s big windows for DevOps remixes like platform engineering.

• “[O]rganizations estimate that nearly 40% of their testing activities are automated, with ambitions to make almost 50% of testing activities automated in three years.” Now, this one feels bonkers. Who doesn’t automate their tests? Who doesn’t see the value in automating their tests? Well, could be that the someone in their team (or their org.) is automating tests and not the person answering “no” to this question. In my CD Foundation survey overview yesterday, I didn’t highlight the practices people said they used. “Test automation/management” use in the last 12 months was at 22%! So…I guess we’re to conclude that universal test automation is not universal. Bit of a WTF? there.

Above from “Applying Artificial Intelligence to Strengthen Application Development and Product Life-Cycle Management,” Pete Marston, IDC, November 2023.

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Relative to your interests

• Spring Now Offers Free Access for the Spring Academy Pro Content - Free Spring training for all: “The Spring team has announced that the Pro Content from their Spring Academy will no longer require a paid subscription, effective April 5th 2024, to improve the learning experience for the Spring community. The Spring Academy will continue to provide new content in the future.”

• A Shift in LLM Marketing : The Rise of the B2B Model - Enterprise AI requirements are different than consumer AI requirements: “For a data-focused customer base, SQL generation, code completion for Python, & following instructions matter more than encyclopedic knowledge of Napoleon’s doomed march to Moscow.”

• IBM to acquire Hashi for $6.4 billion, seeks software boost - Enterprise AI businesses case are difficult: “But he also said buyers’ initial enthusiasm for generative AI has eased as they ponder whether it can generate return on investment. Users are finding that applying generative AI to a single business process could cost as much as $300 million, a figure Krishna said is unlikely to produce positive ROI.”

• Inside TSMC’s Phoenix, Arizona expansion struggles - Sounds like a shitty place to work! Long hours, sometimes filled with low value work. The TSMC people must think Europeans are insane. In contrast, for the American work-culture, this feels like a “thank the unions” story.

• The Chilling of TikTok - “the bigger concern will simply be the distraction of it all. Product decisions will take longer. Timelines will slip. Executives will be absent. Employees will leave.” // Yeah, never good for a tech company to feel under attack. They’re just not used to it.

Wastebook

• “The characters shouldn’t be able to end the entire endless night by killing a big bird.” Sly.

• “The Coddling of the American Parent.” Here.

• “You don’t need to raise a cow to have the milk. You just have to make sure that the milk can be delivered to your doorstep.” Prof. Hsu.

• “In LLMs as in humans, context is that which is scarce.” Here.

• Kubernetes Kopacetic.

Conferences, Events, etc.

Talks I’m giving, places I’ll be, and other plans.

Atlanta Executive Dinner, May 22nd. DevOpsDays Amsterdam, June 20th, speaking. NDC Oslo, speaking, June 12th. SpringOne, August 26–29, 2024.

This year, I won’t be at Cloud Foundry Day (May 15th in NYC), but if you’re going you can get 20% off with the code CFNA24VMW20.

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I’m starting to think I could put together a whole presentation based on these surveys. I wouldn’t want it to be negative, maybe something more like “hey, slow down, in the real world, everything is fine.” I need to come up with a talk to pitch for DevOpsDays Ghent - maybe that’d be good! A sort of “DevOps isn’t dead, it’s just super-chill”…?