Quali has added a generative artificial intelligence (AI) capability to its Torque platform for managing infrastructure-as-code that enables DevOps teams to use natural language to describe a template, that is then automatically created and implemented.
Colin Neagle, vice president of growth marketing for Quali, said this extension to the company’s Torgue platform will make it simpler for DevOps teams of all skill levels to define the application infrastructure, services, parameters, dependencies and security credentials needed to provision an entire IT environment as code.
A DevOps team, for example, can now create a template, also known as a blueprint, using a prompt entered into an AI Blueprint Designer User Interface that describes an Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Cluster (EKS) cluster within a virtual private cloud (VPC) that includes deployment of Apache and Redis applications in a way that ensures high availability, security and efficient resource management. Based on the resources in the repositories that match those descriptions, Torque will design the environment and create a reusable template for the code needed to provision it.
Torque also provides a graphical UI with a visual representation of the orchestrated environment so users can modify resources, dependencies, parameters, or other aspects without combing through and updating the code in the blueprint file. Any updates made in the graphical UI will automatically update the code in the blueprint.
The Torque platform previously enabled DevOps teams to use blueprints to automatically provision an IT environment in a way that eliminated misconfigurations and reduced compliance risks. Based on multiple large language models (LLMs) that Quali is harnessing, the generative AI capability added now reduces the level of expertise previously required to manually create those templates. Those templates can then be shared with other members of DevOps teams via a self-service catalog that Quali also makes available.
Torque users can leverage their existing IaC modules and Kubernetes resources by providing public URLs for their repositories. Torque automatically discovers the resources in their repositories and normalizes them in the platform so they can be provisioned via Torque. Quali also provides Community Assets that DevOps teams can reuse or extend as needed.
DevOps teams can also manage blueprints as YAML files via their Git repositories, including the ability to run environments and push updates to live environments by committing code in Git.
Each DevOps team will need to decide for itself to what degree to centralize the management of IaC using a framework such as Torgue. In some instances, organizations are using Torque to enable platform engineering teams to centrally manage DevOps workflows at scale. In other cases, Torque is also being incorporated within internal developer portals (IDPs) that platform engineering teams are setting up. Each of those approaches provides organizations with a framework for not only provisioning IT environments more securely but also ultimately reducing costs by ensuring IT infrastructure is consumed as efficiently as possible, noted Neagle.
Regardless of approach, the expertise required to provision IT environments is going to be sharply reduced as generative AI tools make it possible for almost anyone on an IT team to programmatically manage IT environments as code.
