CODE Smarter, NOT Harder - The Pursuit of Strategic AI

I survived Y2K, and now I'm tackling the real code crisis: COBOL to Java modernisation, SAS to Python PySpark, or WebSphere to Liberty. This blog will help you understand the business value IBM watsonx Code Assistant generates to boost productivity, accelerate innovation, and enhance code quality.

In today's rapidly evolving technology landscape, CxOs, engineering heads, and DevOps managers face significant challenges with ageing application infrastructures, particularly those entangled in Java, SAS, or WebSphere environments. Modernising these "application black boxes" is crucial for enhancing flexibility and efficiency while reducing operational costs and security risks. 

As a certified expert in Generative AI for Code with IBM watsonx Code Assistant (both Sales Foundation and Technical Sales levels), I understand software development organisations' challenges today. So if the pain points below are hitting a little too close to home, don't worry; it's time to cool things down........

• 🔥Are you Facing the Heat in Software Development?
• 🔥Is your organisation feeling the burn from these common challenges?
• 🔥 Talent Shortages: Can't find the skilled developers you need to keep pace with innovation?
• 🔥Are product releases delayed, customer satisfaction dipping, and revenue taking a hit?
• 🔥 Security and Compliance Concerns: Are you struggling to navigate the complexities of data governance and regulatory requirements, especially in hybrid cloud environments?
• 🔥Worried about protecting your intellectual property and maintaining data control?
• 🔥Are you worried that software delivery teams rely increasingly on ChatGPT for coding, which might unintentionally expose sensitive business IP?

Here's how WCA bring value to you and your business:

• Supercharge Developer Productivity: Imagine your developers freed from tedious, repetitive tasks, coding with greater speed and accuracy. watsonx Code Assistant provides AI-powered code suggestions, automates unit test generation, and even explains complex code segments, significantly boosting productivity.
• Accelerate Time-to-Market: Deliver new features and applications faster by streamlining your development lifecycle. watsonx Code Assistant simplifies both new development and modernisation of legacy applications, reducing time-to-market and giving you a competitive edge.
• Enhance Code Quality and Consistency: Improve code quality and reduce errors with AI-assisted code review and best practice recommendations. Automated documentation generation ensures consistency and reduces maintenance overhead.
• Reduce Modernisation Costs and Risks: Modernise your applications with confidence. watsonx Code Assistant automates code assessment, provides tailored modernisation plans, and streamlines code transformation with AI-powered suggestions, minimising risks and costs.
• Build Trust with Transparent AI: Maintain control over your data and IP with flexible deployment options (SaaS and on-premises) and IP indemnification. watsonx Code Assistant is designed with trust and transparency in mind, ensuring compliance with your specific requirements.

Why this matters to you:

• Increased developer satisfaction and retention: Empower your developers with cutting-edge AI tools, making their work more engaging and efficient.
• Faster innovation: Deliver new products and features to market faster, staying ahead of the competition.
• Reduced development costs: Optimise your development resources and reduce overall project costs.
• Improved code quality and maintainability: Enhance the quality, consistency, and maintainability of your codebase.
• Reduced risk: Mitigate the risks associated with application modernisation.

How can I be so sure?

Since its founding in 2019, Xaana has concentrated on areas like operational efficiency and innovation, deploying over 32+ turnkey EnterpriseAI applications across 1 in 4 of Australian Public Sector Agencies and major enterprises. With a robust team of 160 including more than 50+ Data and AI engineers, scientists, and developers, led by Dan Saldi , Founder and Chief AI Architect, Xaana has secured authorisation to operate within federal sectors, meeting critical standards like #DISP, #SOC2, and #IRAP-Protected. In summary, we have the skills to build, deploy, and clearly understand the end-to-end business application development life cycle.

We also see more code to modernise, more apps to manage, and an ever-growing technical debt.

There is growing interest in applying generative AI across various business functions. Senior business leaders are adopting generative AI to optimise and automate workflows for employees and individual contributors. Ultimately, this is expected to significantly enhance overall employee productivity. As a result, it will likely become a key driver and supporter of the widespread adoption of generative AI technologies and LLMs in every department and organisation. To succeed in Generative AI (genAI), the bigger opportunity is to leverage coding assistants to go beyond writing code:

• to support the entirety of code lifecycle management
• modernise legacy systems and expedite new application development

Fueling the demand for AI solutions, addressing the rising technical debt and ensuring sustainable application maintenance and security.

IBM watsonx Code Assistant (WCA) leads IBM's suite of generative AI tools, aimed at enhancing software development across platforms including and IBM Mainframe (Z Series). WCA leverages AI to streamline software development tasks such as code generation, documentation, and testing, ensuring data security and compliance. Powered by IBM Granite models, WCA integrates with popular IDEs like Visual Studio Code and Eclipse, providing context-sensitive code suggestions to improve efficiency and code quality in multiple programming languages.

Trusting in the output is crucial; IBM's Granite™ foundation models enhance productivity and safeguard intellectual property with robust IP indemnity measures, instilling confidence in the outputs generated.

Furthermore, WCA excels in automating, updating, and modernising the software development lifecycle, efficiently handling complex, time-consuming management and support tasks. This automation extends across the entire software development process, reducing the manual workload and enabling a focus on more strategic, innovative activities.

Tuesday26th Nov., IBM's  AI Summit in Canberra , Nicholas Renotte (watsonx.ai), Poonam Zham (watsonx code Assistant), Richie Paul (watsonx Orchestrate), Karen Hardie (watsonx AI Assistant) and Filip Lou (watsonx Orchestrate)showcased the transformational capabilities of AI enabling Digital Labour and how you can leverage AI to modernise your workforce and innovate. What inspired me was the fact that IBM is enabling organisations to harness the power of generative AI to augment developer skill sets, simplifying and automating coding and modernisation efforts themed under WORK Smarter, NOT Harder.

Embracing AI code assistants is not just about upgrading tools—it's about fundamentally enhancing the software development landscape to meet modern demands and driving forward with confidence in a technology-rich future.

Simplify and accelerate coding workflows across Python, Java, C, C++, Go, JavaScript, Typescript and more.

IBM watsonx Code Assistant™ leverages Granite models to augment developer skill sets, simplifying and automating your development and modernisation efforts. Granite series, IBM's advanced decoder-only code models, is designed for a variety of coding tasks such as bug fixes, code explanations, and documentation. Trained on code from 116 languages, these models set a high standard in performance among open-source code large language models (LLMs).

Key features include diverse functionality, high trustworthiness due to IBM’s transparent training and adherence to AI Ethics principles, and broad accessibility under an Apache 2.0 license. Available in both base and instruction-following variants, these models range from 3B to 34B parameters, catering to a wide array of coding needs.

Speak plainly, build quickly - Write high-quality code aligned with established conventions using simple, natural language prompts - regardless of your experience level.

Get real-time code recommendations - Receive autocomplete coding suggestions directly as you type or when embedding comments that describe what you need watsonx Code Assistant to do.

Comprehend your code - Leverage generative AI and automation to optimise and simplify your code reviews, clearly outlining the purpose, logic and function of what you’ve created.

Stay on target - Generate tests automatically rather than build them from scratch, letting you actively confirm that your software behaves as it should.

Embrace the future - Get recommendations on how to streamline, automate and appropriately scale the end-to-end modernisation of your enterprise Java applications.

Keep the record straight - Capture, explain and summarise your code, making it easy to log each “what?” and “why?” behind development choices.

Ready to turn down the heat and transform your software development?

Connect with me to learn more about how IBM watsonx Code Assistant can help you overcome your challenges and achieve your goals.

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