Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Automation

9 Creative and Practical Uses for NFC Tags

The NFC (Near Field Communication) technology presents many opportunities to improve our lives. These small tags can store vast information and commands that simplify tasks and automate routines. With the NFC, you can significantly simplify your life processes while free to customize their functionality to your preferences. Here's a curated list of creative and pragmatic ways to use NFC tags to your advantage.

What Is Intelligent IT Automation (and How Do I Get Started)?

So, you’ve been tasked with automating one or more of your tedious, time-consuming IT processes… but, what exactly does that mean? And perhaps more importantly, where on earth do you start? IT process automation (ITPA) can cover a broad spectrum of potential use-cases, ranging everywhere from the Service Desk, to the NOC, to Infrastructure, and well beyond.

Critical Platform Engineering Metrics: KPIs that Matter for Success

Platform engineering metrics and/or platform engineering KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can help us measure the success of this evolving approach and its impact on DevOps. According to our 2024 State of DevOps Report: The Evolution of Platform Engineering — 43% of organizations report that they have had a platform team from 3-5 years already. With this maturity, it’s important to measure what’s working and what isn’t working using the same indicators of success across the board.

From MLOps to LLMOps: The evolution of automation for AI-powered applications

Machine learning operations (MLOps) has become the backbone of efficient artificial intelligence (AI) development. Blending ML with development and operations best practices, MLOps streamlines deploying ML models via continuous testing, updating, and monitoring. But as ML and AI use cases continue to expand, a need arises for specialized tools and best practices to handle the particular conditions of complex AI apps — like those using large language models (LLMs).

Feature Friday #2: $(with)

Ever wanted to manipulate a string - temporarily - for an individual promise? Check out the with attribute and its special, $(with) variable. Sometimes you need some variation on a string for a specific case. Traditionally, to achieve this you’d simply define another variable. Here is a contrived example: I have a string, nginx and I want to emit a report that contains both the string itself and the upper case version of the string.

Building a Persuasive Business Case for Automation: A Comprehensive Guide

In today’s increasingly complex and rapidly evolving business landscape, the integration of automation technologies has become a crucial strategy for organizations aiming to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and stay competitive. However, convincing stakeholders and key decision makers to invest in IT automation initiatives requires more than just highlighting its potential benefits.

Fault Injection in your release automation

One of the real successes of the Agile Software development movement has been the push to have regular, frequent deployments. This has manifested as build and deployment automation and the general adoption of CI/CD. As engineers automate more processes of their software release lifecycle, an important question is how to automate Quality Assurance, which includes resilience testing and, more specifically, Fault Injection.

Feature Friday #1: ifelse()

Looking for a way to concisely set a variable conditionally? Have you heard of ifelse()? In CFEngine, traditionally class expressions are used to constrain promises to different contexts. Setting a variable to different values based on context might look like this: /tmp/feature-friday-1.cf command output That’s great, lots of flexibility, but with an increasing number of options the policy can get quite long and it’s easier for a human interpreter to lose track of the context.

Network Automation: Are You the Only One Not Doing It?

In this lively webinar, Corey Quinn from the Duckbill Group, alongside Kentik's Rosalind Whitley and Phil Gervasi, explore network automation, pondering the question, "Am I the only one not doing it?" They explore the current landscape of network automation, discussing tools, value, and the realness of Net DevOps. The trio also considers the future role of AI in networking, debating its potential beyond hype. This conversation sheds light on the cultural and technological factors influencing network automation's adoption and evolution.