Crowdbotics unveils five new features in AI development platform

Crowdbotics has announced the introduction of five new capabilities to its AI-powered application development platform. These capabilities address a variety of challenges that many enterprises face throughout the software development lifecycle.

The enhancements aim to overcome several critical issues. A significant problem is that 70% of development projects fail due to poor or incomplete requirements. Inconsistent architectural decisions across technology portfolios also decelerate application delivery. Furthermore, the inability to accurately forecast cloud costs for new applications fosters uncertainty and risk. The new capabilities aim to tackle these specific challenges.

Launched in January 2024, the Crowdbotics platform leverages generative AI to automate the entire software development process. From converting business requirements into engineering specifications to defining technology architecture and generating starter code, the platform facilitates an accelerated and efficient development cycle.

The first step in using the platform involves generating a comprehensive Product Requirement Document (PRD). Utilising generative AI, Crowdbotics can transform a basic textual prompt into a detailed PRD that bridges the gap between business stakeholders' needs and engineering specifications. This process aims to accelerate development while reducing the associated risks.

Among the newly introduced features is the Enterprise Context capability. This allows IT leaders and architects to set common corporate standards and policies at the beginning of a project. These can include specifics on development languages, frameworks, preferred APIs, and cloud services, as well as regulatory and compliance requirements. Enterprise Context thus ensures consistency and enhances the speed and accuracy of the PRD creation process.

Another feature, Technical Recommendations, uses AI to decompose project requirements into functional specifications, including architectural and design recommendations. This feature takes into account the organisation's Enterprise Context and suggests appropriate services and third-party APIs for implementation. For example, if authentication is required and the organisation prefers Microsoft Azure services, the system might recommend Microsoft Entra ID. This capability aims to accelerate the planning phase and reduce risks by enforcing standards and consistency.

The Application Code Generation feature complements Technical Recommendations by generating up to 50% of the required code based on the PRD, Enterprise Context, and Technical Recommendations. This feature handles routine coding tasks such as generating CRUD operations and third-party API handling, as well as implementing crucial business logic like data validation rules and workflows.

Cloud Consumption Cost Estimation is another new capability introduced to address the complexity of predicting cloud hosting costs. Leveraging generative AI, this feature can now estimate monthly consumption costs for cloud-based applications at the beginning of a project. This early prediction allows engineers to make informed decisions about architecture and design, avoiding costly mistakes later in the development cycle.

In addition, Crowdbotics has integrated its platform with Jira and other project management tools to streamline the transition from PRDs to project plans. This integration ensures that customers benefit from the platform's productivity gains without impacting their existing DevOps tools and infrastructure.

The final new feature, Azure Deployer, allows organisations to deploy applications to the Azure Cloud with a single click. The platform generates the necessary infrastructure and manages the deployment process, including subsequent updates, without requiring infrastructure such as code (IAC) or continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

On the significance of these advancements, Anand Kulkarni, founder and CEO of Crowdbotics, stated, "We should never accept that 70% of all applications will fail. The Crowdbotics Platform ensures development teams have access to more information than ever before to capture business and user requirements, make intelligent technology decisions, and even automate the writing of high-quality code, so companies can achieve their goals and drive success."