IBM TechExchange 2025 featured AI, Agents, Observability and other technologies that are changing the way that developers work. In this Enterprise Automation Excellence podcast, hosts Dan Twing and Tom O'Rourke discuss Dan's learnings from the event and what these trends mean for developers, as well as the implications for automation, development and DevOps teams. A key theme is howthese new tools require rethinking development processes, with a particular focus on the need for guardrails and check points for systems that are relying on non-deterministic AI as part of the solution. 

 Key Points

• AI-Assisted development tools continue to evolve, helping developers work faster, rather than replacing them 
• Many new AI-based development projects have not moved out of the experimentation stage
• Guardrails are essential at multiple levels, from the application itself to security monitoring and production operation checkpoints
• Agentic AI applications differ fundamentally from traditional apps and require completely different approaches to building, testing, and monitoring
• Observability tools are bringing together resource and performance monitoring with traditional systems operations solutions
• While TechXchange for focused on IBM's solutions, this evolution of development and operations reflects a fundamental shift that impacts every enterprise technology stack

Takeaways for Automation Leaders

• Prepare your automation workflows for AI-assisted development projects
• Consider what guardrails your automation solution can provide to address unexpected behaviors in AI-based applications 
• AI-based applications will operate differently and introduce new failure modeswhen unanticipated inputs provide unexpected outputs

Takeaways for I&O and DevOps Leaders

• AI-assisted development will change application architectures, behavior patterns, infrastructure usage and support models
• Observability platform development is accelerating, evaluate your vendor strategies to make sure that your tools fit your operations and business needs
• This isn't a passing trend, it reflects a new, faster trajectory of technology change

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IBM TechXchange 2025 (https://www.ibm.com/community/ibm-techxchange-conference/)

 EAE Podcast Home: https://em360tech.com/podcast-series/enterprise-automation-excellence

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