Today’s topics include Google releasing Stackdriver Profiler for managing application performance, and Microsoft Excel getting new AI-powered data types.
Google has released Stackdriver Profiler, a tool that enables developers to quickly identify and address potential code performance issues while an application is running and without disrupting user experience.
Stackdriver Profiler works with Google’s Stackdriver Monitoring and Stackdriver Logging application performance management tools, which alert developers to potential performance-impacting infrastructure and security issues.
Google Product Manager Morgan McLean said analyzing the impact of code on an application’s overall performance helps developers identify functions and code that are unexpectedly resource intensive and have a negative impact on latency and the cost of web services.
Stackdriver Profiler analyzes code execution across multiple environments and uses statistical methods to minimize impact on any codebase that is being monitored. It builds on top of the core functionality provided by Stackdriver Trace and Debugger—two Google technologies for analyzing and debugging live applications.
Microsoft on March 29 rolled out to Office 365 business users who are in the Office Insider early-access program new capabilities in Excel that infuse spreadsheets with artificial intelligence.
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Office group at Microsoft, said Excel’s “new, cloud-connected data types” build on Excel’s ability to automatically recognize text and number strings, helping users quickly arrive at the insights they’re looking for.
The Excel capabilities use the same technology that powers Bing answers, which is a collection of AI-assisted intelligent search capabilities powered by field programmable gate arrays from Intel. They enable Microsoft’s search engine to decode jargon and generate multiple answers to how-to questions.