Revolutionizing Testing Efficiency: Tricentis Copilot Solutions With Scott Erlanger

This is Techstrong tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong tv.

You know, it's always a good day in the neighborhood when I can get someone from t Tricentis on the show with us. T Tricentis has been a sponsor of Techstrong for years, probably going on four or five years or more. And, you know, it's, it's, it's been a great partnership.

They are a worldwide leader in, in continuous testing and have been, and are always sort of at the edge of, of what's new around testing and, and QA and so forth. And I, I think today's conversation is gonna be in that right, in that, you know, sweet spot. But I want to introduce you first though, to Scott Erlanger.

Scott is the director of product marketing at or for DevOps at tricentis. And uh, Scott, welcome to Text Drug tv. It's great to have you on.

Yeah, thanks Alan. It's great to be here. So, Scott, you're welcome.

It, we always like to let people know who, a little bit about the person who's talking to them, they already know me, so there's no sense saying that, but why don't you give them a little bit of your background, Scott? Yeah, no, absolutely. I know, as Alan just mentioned, so I'm the, uh, director of product marketing for DevOps at Tricentis right now.

But my, my background's a little bit more diverse, I guess I'd say. You know, I actually started off my career working in microprocessors. I was doing, uh, development of server chips for companies that included Intel and later moved into in product marketing for software.

I've worked in a few different industries, but some of the companies I worked at included, you know, doing DevOps at a company, Zia Labs, which later became a part of digital ai. And I was the, the, both the DevOps and the Agile product marketing there. And that's, uh, Tricentis, I, I lead the, the product marketing for what we call our DevOps business unit.

But essentially what we, what it is, is that product development teams, the solutions built for teams that need to be able to do testing as part of their fast moving release processes. And, and that's the area of the company that I tend to focus in. Excellent.

So, Scott, tell the truth. There's gotta be a little bit of envy or thinking thing. Man, I wish I was back in hardware design right now.

All of a sudden hardware became so cool with the AI and GPUs and all of this, we're all talking about, you know, the latest greatest hardware where for a long time it was all software all the time. You know, that's a really good point. I mean, for a while was sort of what ran your windows or what ran your, your, your Linux operating system.

But the funny thing is, is that even back then I was working on chips that had these vector graphics units in them. So it's been in the works for a while and it's really great to see this technology actually moving forward and finally seeing its application with all this ai, uh, it, it, it, it's great. Yeah.

Yeah. Well it's great if you have stock in any of these companies. True.

Less for certain. Yeah. It's going through, you know, we were, we were just discussing it on Textron gang this morning.

I mean, just, you know, and now they're starting to build into the kind of green solutions who could do this more environmentally friendly and everything else. A great time to be in hardware data centers all deep. No, that for certain too.

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. Power is is just as important as performance when it comes to chips and the more, the more you can save in your power, the greener you can do it, the better you're gonna be able to get out of there.

Sure. But yeah, So t tricentis, we, we've spoken a little bit, I gave a little bit of a background. Um, you are in the kind of the DevOps unit if you'll of tricentis.

And you know, obviously testing is an integral part of the DevOps pipeline For certain right. Shift left test, more test, better feedback loops Ritz and repeat. Um, and it's an important part of the tricentis kind of family, if you will.

Yeah. But for folks maybe who aren't as familiar with tricentis, can you give them a maybe a little broader overview? Yeah, no, for tricentis business?

Yeah, for certain. Um, so Tricentis is really a global leader in continuous testing and quality engineering. And, you know, really what that all means is that, you know, we cover the testing of all sorts of different applications, including the web applications, mobile applications.

We cover some, the end-to-end enterprise type of applications, including, you know, ERP systems and, and, and other sorts of solutions. So really and performance testing as well. So really we cover all the different pieces that come together that's really necessary to be able to release all different type of software.

Absolutely. Alright. com.

But Scott, I wanted to kind of turn our conversation over to some recent announcements coming out of tricentis, like many other vendors and tech com, like, like basically everyone, we're all talking about how are we gonna incorporate AI into our product to make our customers and users lives better, easier, more efficient? Tricentis recently made an announcement in this regard, why don't you share with us a little bit? Yeah, no, I'd be happy to do that.

I mean, the really interesting thing is that Tricentis, AI and ML have really always been a part of a lot of our different solutions across the board. And the one that we just recently announced is essentially called Testim copilot, uh, which is part of our overall tricentis copilot, uh, solutions. And what Testim copilot is, is that it, you know, builds on top of Testim, which is our test automation solution for developed product development teams.

And it basically has the, the, the, the goals of enabling teams to be able to move faster. It helps, makes it easier and quicker to be able to develop custom code and custom, you know, tests for, for the most complicated applications such that teams can, you know, be able to actually get them out the door faster. So testing, you know, is able to keep up with the speed of development as well.

Absolutely. You know, one of the, I I, I gotta make an admission here. When I first saw all of these different things called copilot coming out Yeah.

I was like, wow, I wonder if Microsoft's going to sue them or anything. But I guess copilot is such a generic term that everyone is using it, you know, in terms of an AI assistant within your software or tool set, you know, helping you, helping you drive it. So that, I I think that's become, you know, it it is, it's not become, it is a generic term that everyone uses.

And I, I guess we're starting to understand exactly what we mean when we say copilot. I, I think That's right. Yeah, yeah.

You know, like little things like that, they just pass it to the vernacular, right? And it's like, oh yeah, it's a copilot. Well, of course, you know what that is.

It's an AI assistant. I think it's a Good term. If I would've told you that 10 years ago, you would've thought of airplanes, but, you know, It's true, it's true.

It's funny how that changes. I mean, I think that, yeah. Is a good one because it really describes at least how we view, you know, how the, how the solution fits in, right?

We have testim, which is again, test automation that's really built for these development teams to move fast, to be able to have more stable tests. But what this copilot does is it sits on the side is when you have to have these really more complicated things, you consult the copilot, you ask it to generate code automatically, you know that that's able to perform these functions. You ask it to explain existing code, it can do debugging.

It's really this thing that helps really, you know, maybe fly your plane more levelly or be able to get, you know, get from point A to point B in a more direct manner. So let me ask you, let's dig in on that a little bit. Yeah.

When you say, when you ask it to generate code, are you talking about it, it generates testing scripts, or are you talking about it generates or examines the code that the developers are putting in the pipeline to be tested? Or both? No, that's a, no, that's a great question.

So I, I'll describe what it does. So it has three different key functionalities as a part of it. The first one is that it generates testing codes.

So as part of a, you know, testim is overall a low code solution. So most of what it does is done without code. You're able to use a recorder, you're able to click on elements and have it build the test for you.

But there's some cases that, that code can sort certainly is, is helps with certain more complicated situations. And what this does is that you can type in, you know, what type of code you're looking for, are you looking to access a database? Are you looking to, you know, examine an image on a page and it'll produce the code that's necessary to do that.

And also code that works within Testim, it's built to be done in Testim. But back to your question though, you can take, uh, you know, any code, any test code within any JavaScript code in particular, select it. Ask it to explain the code to you, and it will tell you what the code does.

So it's not just about generating code, it's really more about being able to leverage code to be able to use code more easily across a team. You know, even if you weren't the one that wrote the code, it also has built-in debugging capabilities as well. So it's really generative AI to help out with, with this test code in particular.

So it doesn't actually go into the actual code of the application per se, but it helps you really in multiple different ways to be able to become more productive as, as, as part of your test generation process. Love it. Good stuff.

I gotta ask you a hard question. Sure. I hope I don't put you on the spot, so It's okay.

You know, one of the things we've been talking here on text, on TV with a lot of folks in the industry, a lot of vendors, is everybody's budget is tight. Sure. One gets up on here, it says, wow, they gave me more budget than I thought I was gonna have.

Right? At the same time, everybody wants more functionality. I want AI built into my product.

Yeah. I want a co-pilot where rubber meets the road is. Right?

These people say, I want co-pilot AI built into my product, but I don't wanna pay more for it. Right. And that, you know, from a vendor's point of view, it's like, Hey, we're working as hard as we can.

We're giving you the cutting edge here, but this doesn't come free. It costs money to develop this. The tricent, co-pilot solutions, are they, uh, a, an option, like a, a pay for option, or are they built in here?

What's the story? Yeah, no, that's a great question. So, so they are, they, they are a, an addition to the, to the base products such as Testim.

Um, and, and they essentially, and what it's built to do is to pair with the existing product and really enhance the experience by providing this generative AI capabilities. And you raise a great point that, you know, obviously everybody you know, is, is budgets tight. They wanna make sure that what they're actually getting as part of the product is something that delivers value to them.

And that's really what we're looking to do with all the, the tricentis, co-pilots is be able to have something that has, you know, po positive, you know, return, it's able to help your team work more productively to be able to generate tests faster, better test faster. Um, the one big thing that's worth mentioning too is that, you know, by removing this need to actually write the code yourself from scratch, it also enables more of the team to be able to write tests. So it really makes it so you can get more and get further using the tricentis solutions and try and test them in this particular case.

Agreed. So here, here's my take on this, right? Sure.

Having been through a lot of technology cycles over my career right now, it's a, it's a fairly new novel thing. Sure. But it's like, you know, it's like giving, uh, kids candy or drug addicts drugs, right.

Once they get cooked on it, they, they really, it becomes indispensable, right. But at the same time, it's gonna become table stakes. Sure.

Right. You, you, you don't, you're not gonna get a solution without the AI built in. Right.

It's not gonna be an option anymore. When do you foresee, Scott, that this becomes de facto the default solution? Of course it has copilot built in it.

I mean, honestly, I think, I think we're not that far off from that. I think that AI and generative AI has been in products for quite a while. I mean, even as part of our products, we've had, you know, AI as part of our, uh, you know, keeping tests stable as part of our help assistance for quite a while.

And I think that this is just the next step there. I I, as you mentioned, you see it across all, all industries and all different types of products that AI is something that people do expect, but even more so I think that they expect it as part of the workflow that they want to use. Yeah.

They want to generate things quickly. They don't wanna have to go back to the way things used to be. But I think the good thing there too is that, you know, we're not staying standing still with this either.

We're continuing to innovate with our AI solutions, and this bar is gonna keep getting pushed forward and forward again and again. And, and, you know, even if we look back upon where things are today in a couple of years, I think that things are gonna be drastically different and continue to provide, you know, even better solutions for, for, for, for both our, our customers Absolutely. Across the world.

Yeah. Now, the flip side is there are gonna be some people out here who are saying, oh my goodness, am I gonna have a job? Because co-pilot's gonna write the scripts and do it all.

Now again, I've been through a lot of technology cycles. I've never seen less jobs as a result of a technology innovation. Yeah.

It always spurs more jobs. They might be different kinds of jobs. They might, you know, demand maybe more skills or at least free up people to do higher value stuff.

I'm gonna imagine that's not the, the, the aim of, of the tricentis copilot solutions. It's to enhance the capabilities of testers, both professional and we wanna call 'em citizen testers or whatever, you know, their non-professional, uh, tester. Uh, but it's to enhance their Right, their contributions not to replace them.

I think that's exactly correct. I mean, you look at it this way, right? Software development speed is, isn't slowing down.

The complexity of the programs that we're using isn't getting any simpler. People are using AI to develop applications, and you really need an AI to, uh, based solution to build, to, to provide the testing and the quality that's leading that application too. I think you're exactly right.

Things will just move faster, the skill sets rather than simply, you know, doing everything by hand. There's more automation that's available, there's more ability to use this generative AI to help you become more productive and to be able to do more. I think it's only gonna be really a productivity enhancer and really help people to use this as a tool to be able to towards their jobs.

I think that, as you say, skill sets change and this is just gonna be another tool in the toolkit that lets people really get the most out of, out out their solutions. Absolutely. And, and I think that's how people should look at it, because look, the, I think there's a percentage of our IT audience who look at this as a threat.

Oh, of course. Yeah, that's understandable. And They, they really shouldn't.

They should be looking at it as how do they leverage it to make themselves more valuable to their organization and in the marketplace. I think it's just, it's something new and different. It requires a new set of skills to understand how to best use the generative ai.

Like what type of prompts generate the best types of responses, how to use it with any solutions like ours to be able to generate tests and to generate, you know, uh, higher quality applications. I think it's just something new that people, once they get used to it, they'll understand it better and, and they'll, they'll view it for what it, it what it's able to provide. Absolutely.

Let me make it real personal for you. How's it helping you with product marketing? Oh, well, that's a really great question.

I think that generative AI has a great promise for product marketing when it comes to, you know, things like getting a blog draft ready, you know, creating simple types of tasks. You then focus more on things like actually getting the right message, connecting with our customers. I think that, you know, from marketing in particular, generative AI has a lot of promise to make things simpler, to make things faster so you can work on the things that actually deliver the most value.

I, I'm, I am all for it. Very cool. Very cool.

Hey Scott, we're about at time. Um, but beyond the copilot Sure. Recent announcements, I know Tricentis had some other product announcements.

Anything else that you think we wanna bring out to the audience around those that they should be aware of? No, that's the, no in particular, I guess I'll mention that, you know, the Testim copilot is really just the first one of many that's gonna be the tricentis copilot. We actually in beta right now have the TOSCA copilot, which is our enter end-to-end enterprise, um, uh, test automation solution.

And also we're planning on having a Q test copilot as well, which is our test management as well. And these are all gonna add to those capabilities too. So to Tricentis AI is gonna be a clear part of what we're doing moving forward.

Good. See, we built on the Tricentis copilot, and it's something that we think is gonna enhance and add a lot of value across our entire portfolio Without holding your feet to the fire. When can we expect to see these additional copilots out there?

Oh, That's a great question. Um, as I said, toss Tosca right now in the beta program, so it's, it's gonna be out in the near future. And so I think that you can expect to see some announcements in, in the, in the very near future coming out.

I love it. Hey, thank you. Thanks to all our friends at Tricentis.

You know, you are our partners on our DevOps on Bounce series, which is here on Techstrong tv. I like every other week, uh, it's a great theories and great, great information there on DevOps. So love, you know, love working with t Tricentis, keep up with, you know, it doesn't surprise me that you guys are leading, coming out with co-pilots here on this and, and, you know, keeping, that's how you get to stay the leader, you know, and worldwide testing.

Right. Scott, thanks absolutely for being on Text Drunk tv. We'll, hope to have you back on soon.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me. It was great talking. Alrightyy Scott Erlanger, director of product marketing for DevOps here, uh, from Tricentis here on Text Trunk tv.

We'll take a break on the Text Trunk TV network. We'll back in a moment.