ChatOps Out Of The Shadows

Chat apps like Slack, HipChat and Flowdock have already disrupted email. But 2017 will see a rush to ChatOps adoption, extending those products into IT operations and mission-critical workflows.

The shift to ChatOps will tie in with the development of artificially intelligent bots that integrate those collaborative platforms with other business apps and infrastructure monitoring tools, said Mitch Wainer, co-founder of IaaS provider DigitalOcean.

"The more that Slack and these chat apps can minimize the number of interactions required to do your job at work, the better," Wainer said.

Atlassian's Steve Goldsmith, who manages the company's HipChat product, said chat apps were until recently in the realm of shadow IT—applications not consecrated by IT administrators.

Now that they're in the mainstream, with teams relying on them for real-time communications, ChatOps integrations will spread beyond development and IT teams, and across the workplace, Goldsmith said.