It was a great experience attending TechCrunch Disrupt SF this week. The RigD team spent one day exhibiting in the AI and Machine Learning section and the rest of the show attending different and through provoking sessions.  While we did not see many DevOps or IT Operations focused startups, there were a few there besides us.   What was most striking was how machine learning (ML) and AI technologies are permeating all other businesses.  Seeing companies setting up to deliver ML and/or AI as a service, or other companies targeting specific applications shows how much these technology areas are penetrating all business fields.   The transformation of non-digital industries to using ML and AI is going to be a huge driver for customer value across many use cases from medical to financial to furniture sales.

 

Not surprisingly DevOps as a mode of building, deploying and operating software has become the norm for the startup community.  We had newly minted CEOs visit our booth and they were definitely aware of DevOps and wanted to know how RigD could help them.  Many had just started thinking about what happens when they have customers and start scaling and the need for operational management and augmentation  and automation.  RigD can help there.  Watch our CEO, Justin Griffin, being interviewed by Galvanize:

 

 

There was also a strong emphasis on learning directly from customers and for both the startups and customers to try on the new use cases and the software.  Better to build products people need versus what the marketing strategy deck says.  In addition, there was a focus away from traditional marketing to being a bit “edgier” in messaging, which we have seen and have adopted with RigD with our pirate bot avatar.     Overall we recommend other startups attend TechCrunch, there will be significant value.

 

From the RigD team, we welcome you to explore our PagerDuty integration here, and to stay tuned from some big news tomorrow.