Perforce introduces AI features for DevOps, boosts efficiency & testing

Perforce Software has announced the launch of Perforce Intelligence, a new tool designed to integrate artificial intelligence across its DevOps product lines and bridge gaps between security, development, and operations teams.

Perforce Intelligence is embedded within the company's continuous testing, infrastructure automation, and diagramming solutions, aiming to help customers save time and costs, expand test coverage, and address data silos that typically exist in technology teams.

The integration of AI within existing Perforce products challenges the effectiveness of generic AI approaches. The company is also announcing enhancements to Puppet Enterprise Advanced, which are intended to help teams learn, optimise, and better understand their infrastructure changes without requiring specialist skills in the Puppet language.

Jim Mercer, Program Vice President, Software Development, DevOps & DevSecOps at IDC, commented on the complexity of implementing AI successfully in technology teams. 

He said, "AI is not easy to implement among teams, and we've seen pockets of success but also still a ton of confusion and need for understanding of how and where to embed AI within the DevOps lifecycle. It will be important for companies and institutions to partner with organizations that provide them with high value and low risk when it comes to AI."

Jake Hookom, Executive Vice President of Products at Perforce, outlined the company's aim to act as a multiplier for AI adoption in business. 

He said, "At Perforce, we understand that every organisation, regardless of size, has AI ambitions. Our approach to AI is to act as a strategic multiplier, helping businesses adopt AI in a way that delivers value and produces measurable outcomes from our products and within their larger DevOps ecosystem. With security and compliance top of mind for enterprises, those customers are affirming our approach to AI every week with stories on the positive impact we're having on their DevOps teams."

Perforce Intelligence claims to differentiate from other testing tools by eliminating the need for scripts and frameworks, aiming to simplify the process for teams to deliver secure applications across various platforms or devices. The tool uses visual and contextual validation to ensure applications adapt dynamically without requiring human intervention, reportedly providing customers with 50% efficiency gains and a 20% increase in test coverage, according to the company.

Byron Chan, Digital Delivery Quality Assurance Lead at Servus, commented on the product's potential: "We are excited about where this can go. I see tremendous potential because eventually you could come up with test cases in this prompt format before development even starts, and then once developed/deployed, you could potentially avoid manual testing and automation test development because it's already done."

Puppet Enterprise Advanced, part of Perforce's infrastructure automation portfolio, will include a new feature in June 2025 called Puppet Infra Assistant. This is a chat interface that enables users to interact with their infrastructure in natural language, providing visibility into configuration, compliance, and operational status without needing specialist skills.

Margaret Lee, Manager of Product Management for Perforce Puppet, highlighted the role of natural language AI: "Puppet has a trove of data to help customers make smarter decisions, but we haven't previously had the means to make it readily accessible for Puppet stakeholders or adjacent teams – like security and development teams - who would really benefit from it. Natural language AI unlocked this potential."

"Teams can quickly and easily understand what's happening, make meaningful decisions, and take action to align with their desired business outcomes. Early customers have responded very positively, with one noting that a task that used to take three hours now takes seconds with Puppet Infra Assistant."

Perforce Puppet is positioned as an infrastructure automation solution designed to streamline operations, improve security and compliance, and enhance visibility across varying infrastructure environments.

For software diagramming, Gliffy, Perforce's diagramming platform for Confluence, now incorporates AI to accelerate the creation of sequence and class diagrams, with the company stating this makes the process three times faster and helps teams represent complex concepts more efficiently.

Looking ahead, Perforce outlined several upgrades planned for 2025 as part of the broader Perforce Intelligence roadmap. These include advances for creative workflow acceleration, the provision of compliant and masked data for AI and machine learning projects, maintenance-free testing automation approaches that remove legacy scripting, and agent-to-agent orchestration for infrastructure change management and ongoing compliance.