The Hybrid Cloud Platforms team within the IBM Chief Information Officer (CIO) Organization is responsible for delivering, securing and modernizing an immense, diverse IT environment that powers applications used by hundreds of thousands of IBMers every day. “We have a broad scope of responsibility for business-critical application infrastructure. Take, for example, our manufacturing or sales applications. If those go down, IBM business comes to a halt. It’s those types of applications that our team supports,” explains Bob Epstein, Leader, IBM CIO Hybrid Cloud Platforms.
The team’s mission is not just to keep the lights on. Their mission is to accelerate business transformation across IBM. “Our work to optimize IBM’s infrastructure is essentially the cornerstone that enables everyone else to run fast and innovate in their role,” adds Melissa Santisteban, CIO Strategy Lead at IBM. The team is always looking for new ways to streamline and automate tedious, repetitive IT maintenance tasks that are required across the entire IT estate. They seek to eliminate drudgery and instead give their developers the time they need to contribute to transformational initiatives.
This is why the team relies on industry-leading technologies such as Red Hat® Ansible® Automation and why, when the Technical Preview of IBM® watsonx™ Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed began, they volunteered to test out the solution.
Before the technical preview program began, Epstein’s team was already relying on Red Hat Ansible Automation to support a wide range of tasks within their IT environment. “We use Ansible automations every single day, whether it’s through patching, resolving vulnerabilities or running regular health checks of our systems,” explains Epstein. When they began testing watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, Epstein’s team started by focusing on their existing use cases.
With watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, developers can build a task for an Ansible Playbook using natural language inputs. Once the input is submitted, the solution then offers suggestions on how to build that task.
“Our team of people who could produce Ansible Playbooks before the technical preview program began was around 10. Once the Enterprise Version of watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed becomes Generally Available, we expect we would be able to ask our extended team to produce Ansible content because it will generate content recommendations based on natural language inputs. In that sense, we expect our pool of individuals who can produce this content to grow by about a factor of 10,” says Epstein.
Of IBM’s Ansible Playbook content was automatically generated by watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed in tech preview
During the technical preview of watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, the team was able to achieve 60% initial build of an Ansible Playbook using recommendations provided by watsonx.
“I like to look at our modernization journey in these stages: crawl, walk, run, fly. In the past, we were crawling, doing a lot of things manually. Then, when we started automating, we were walking. Once we implemented Red Hat Ansible, we were running. And as we look ahead, with watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, I think we will be able to fly,” adds Robert Barron, Architect, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, IBM CIO Organization. See how watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed can help you fly.
Every company will have different use cases and will, therefore, experience different results. Client examples, like IBM’s, are illustrative, but actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions. Generally expected results cannot be provided as client results will depend on the data, systems and services used.
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) Organization leads IBM’s internal IT strategy and is responsible for delivering, securing, modernizing and supporting the IT solutions that IBMers, clients and partners use to do their jobs every day. The CIO strategy encompasses creating an adaptive IT platform that makes IT easier to access across the enterprise, accelerates problem-solving and serves as an innovation engine for IBM, catalyzing business growth.
Legal
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2023. IBM Corporation, New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504
Produced in the United States of America, October 2023.
IBM, the IBM logo, and watsonx are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on ibm.com/legal/copyright-trademark.
Red Hat and Ansible trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.
All client examples cited or described are presented as illustrations of the manner in which some clients have used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual client configurations and conditions. Generally expected results cannot be provided as each client’s results will depend entirely on the client's systems and services ordered. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.