Partner POV | IBM watsonx Code Assistant's Latest Expansion in Infrastructure Automation

Article written by Matt Rodkey, Head of Product watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed, IBM. 

As businesses increasingly rely on robust digital frameworks to support their operations, the need for effective infrastructure management tools has never been more apparent. According to a recent IDC report, 77% of studied organizations believe that digital infrastructure is mission-critical for the success of their digital business strategies. Infrastructure automation serves as the backbone of software development to help drive these strategies, ensuring that applications are not only properly deployed but also meticulously configured to meet the specific requirements of various environments.

To support this, IBM watsonx Code Assistant is setting out to further expand its IT Automation capabilities to include Terraform, enhancing infrastructure management across the software lifecycle.

IBM watsonx Code Assistant: Streamlining IT automation

Picture a dedicated team of developers working tirelessly to keep their IT infrastructure intact. They face numerous challenges, from the lack of skilled staff to data management and scalability. The shortage of up-to-date IT and cloud operations staff, skills and automation are among the most important challenges, cited by 38% of surveyed organizations according to IDC. This is like having a city with insufficient engineers to maintain its roads and buildings. The developers must handle vast amounts of data efficiently and ensure their systems can scale to meet growing demands. Integrating new technologies into existing systems and continuously optimizing operations to maintain performance further complicates their task. Addressing these challenges requires innovative solutions that can automate and streamline processes and bring seamless integration and operational excellence.

This is where AI comes in. IBM watsonx Code Assistant helps automate across the software development lifecycle with compatibility across diverse IT infrastructures for languages like Ansible. Ansible focuses on configuration management and application deployment. It's used to configure the software and settings on the servers or other infrastructure that Terraform has provisioned (for example installing packages, setting up users or deploying applications). Watsonx Code Assistant leverages models trained on high-quality, carefully curated Ansible datasets (not random public data) to provide developers with the ability to leverage natural language playbook and role generation, detailed explanations and a customizable model that provides personalized recommendations to address compliance and scales business needs. 

Terraform: Coming soon to watsonx Code Assistant

As organizations continue to evolve and adopt new technologies, the need for robust infrastructure as code (IaC) solutions becomes increasingly important. HashiCorp's Terraform is scheduled to be a new, future supported language within watsonx Code Assistant, promising to further revolutionize infrastructure automation.

Terraform excels in managing infrastructure across multiple cloud platforms, enabling developers to define and provision infrastructure using a high-level configuration language. The upcoming integration will allow watsonx Code Assistant developers generate Terraform templates and scripts to provision infrastructure and use Ansible to configure it—automating the full infrastructure lifecycle. The advantages of using Terraform include its ability to manage complex dependencies, drive consistent configurations, and facilitate collaboration among teams.

With Terraform integrated into watsonx Code Assistant, organizations will be able to automate their infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and maintenance processes more effectively, ensuring that their IT environments are always optimized and up-to-date.

Use cases for Terraform and Ansible

One of the most pressing challenges for organizations already using Terraform is managing updates to modules and providers. These components are frequently enhanced with new features and performance improvements. However, many teams delay upgrades due to the manual effort and risk involved in updating infrastructure code.

This often results in technical debt and missed opportunities for optimization. IBM watsonx Code Assistant's expansion to Terraform can help address this challenge by automating the upgrade process. It analyzes existing Terraform configurations, identifies outdated modules and providers, and suggests compatible updates. By generating updated code and providing clear explanations of changes, it reduces the risk of errors and accelerates the adoption of new capabilities.

Another common scenario involves deploying a newly built application. A developer might need to provision infrastructure for this application in a specific environment—whether that's AWS, on-premises, or even migrating from one cloud provider to another, such as from AWS to Azure. With watsonx Code Assistant and Terraform, developers will be able to describe their deployment requirements in natural language, and the tool will generate Terraform code to help provision the infrastructure. Once the infrastructure is in place, Ansible takes over to configure the environment—installing software, setting up users, and deploying the application.

This end-to-end automation can help reduce the time and complexity involved in launching new services, especially in hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

Transform your IT infrastructures with Terraform

Being armed with powerful tools equipped with AI can help transform IT infrastructures into a well-oiled machine. IBM watsonx Code Assistant, Ansible and Terraform become the heroes of this story, automating tasks that once required immense manual effort. With watsonx Code Assistant's AI-driven insights, Ansible's seamless configuration management, and Terraform's robust infrastructure provisioning, developers can focus on innovation rather than maintenance. As they deploy applications across diverse environments, the automation handles configuration and optimization tasks. The integration of Terraform promises even greater efficiency to make complex infrastructure management simple. Watsonx Code Assistant represents the future of IT, empowering organizations to build, deploy, and maintain their digital landscape with ease and reliability.