On the third and final day of CloudEXPO, IT thought-leaders and innovators looked ahead at optimizing existing processes during the implementation of technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Listening to the perspectives and experiences of today’s presenters, audiences got to wrap up CloudEXPO Silicon Valley with fresh ideas on how to bolster their IT strategies.
Avoid False Positives in Testing by Prioritizing Risks
For all applications and IT functions, testing is crucial to ensuring that everything is working as expected. But with the advent of more agile timelines and increasing demand to deliver as quickly as possible, the quality and even accuracy of testing has suffered. CloudEXPO DevOpsSUMMIT Chair Anand Akela related this issue to the classic “I Love Lucy” chocolate scene that featured Lucy and Ethel struggling to keep up with an assembly line of chocolates. In the end, the two wind up sending out inferior products, but not without eating and hiding them when they became overwhelmed. Internal IT teams are feeling similar pressure each time they’re unable to catch up with frequent changes to code and applications. Sometimes, this chaos can even result in an increase in false positive results.
To adequately review and validate technologies, Akela explained that although frequently updating or reworking the testing process might be impossible, better accuracy and efficiency is possible when you start by identifying the acceptable amount of risk for each component or function of an application. Prioritizing which elements need the most scrutiny allows for the testing process to be divided into manual and automated testing. This segmentation helps prevent the manual testers from becoming overwhelmed by the agile approach—and avoid a repeat of a Lucy and Ethel fiasco—while also preventing automated testing from lagging behind and delivering false positives. This innovative, blended approach is known as continuous testing, and it aims to enable organizations to push new, dependable applications and technology at a competitive pace.
The Future of IT is Here, but What Needs to Improve?
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, data science—CloudEXPO’s AI session track provided examples that brought these complex concepts to life, including technology evangelist Gordon Haff’s presentation on “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of these emerging technologies.
Haff explained that while Siri, Alexa, and Cortana might easily come to mind for AI on the consumer level and have literally been welcomed into their homes, there are still hurdles to overcome. Challenges regarding data privacy and ownership, sophistication of voice and visual recognition, and inherent bias still exist, but nothing can slow down the progress for data scientists and developers.
The drive for these IT professionals comes from many places, but enterprise organizations are clearly part of the push—Elliott Ning, Cloud Customer Advisor at Google, shared the staggering projection that the percentage of CIOs deploying AI will rise from 4% in 2018 to 85% in 2020. With the increased demand for innovation, many prestigious universities are also committing to technology evolution. Always on the forefront, M.I.T. announced in 2018 that they would build a college specifically for artificial intelligence to be opened by Fall 2019, which means the next generation of engineers, scientists, and problem-solvers are already looking for solutions to Haff’s laundry list of issues.
Reflecting on CloudEXPO Silicon Valley
Over the past three days, our team was fortunate to meet and interact with IT professionals from many different industries and with many different challenges. We were also glad to have the opportunity to share our own key insights during Ntirety CEO Emil Sayegh’s keynote presentation and CISO Chris Riley’s session on the first day of the event. Moving forward, we look forward to bringing the next great tech trends to life for organizations and partners across the globe!
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