New Relic & GitHub Copilot integration boosts DevOps speed

New Relic has announced an integration between its AI-powered observability platform and the GitHub Copilot coding agent to streamline software development workflows and improve application reliability.

This integration aims to automate the traditional processes of change validation and incident response, enabling enterprises to accelerate software deployment cycles while maintaining system stability. The unified approach brings together proactive monitoring by New Relic and automated code remediation through GitHub Copilot's agentic capabilities.

Describing the significance of the new technology, New Relic Chief Product Officer Manav Khurana said: "Agentic AI is poised to be a transformative technology for enterprise software developers and engineers, who are facing intense pressure to ship more innovations at a faster pace without sacrificing quality and reliability."

He added: "With the innovative integration of New Relic's intelligent observability technology with GitHub Copilot coding agent, we are closing the loop on ensuring continued application health. Together with our long time partner GitHub, we are providing a new, agentic way for modern software development that uses the power of agentic AI to transform the way enterprises innovate."

The combined solution leverages New Relic's continuous code deployment monitoring to automatically detect performance issues arising from recent changes. If an issue is identified, New Relic pinpoints the root cause and generates a comprehensive GitHub issue, complete with context for developers. Developers can then review this automated issue and, if deemed sufficient, delegate it to GitHub Copilot. Copilot analyses the issue, drafts a suggested code fix, and initiates a pull request for human review. After the fix is merged, New Relic validates the correction, completing the issue resolution cycle.

This process aims to reduce the time required to resolve coding issues, allowing developers to dedicate more attention to impactful projects rather than repetitive troubleshooting tasks. Key benefits outlined by New Relic include automation of detection and validation processes, empowerment of engineers to focus on strategic work, quicker resolution of performance issues, and safer, faster deployment cycles.

Julia Liuson, President, Developer Division at Microsoft, commented on the importance of collaborative integrations: "Millions of organisations rely on GitHub every day for software delivery. Our integrations with key partners like New Relic are instrumental in making our tools that much more scalable, reliable and intelligent. Together with key partners like New Relic we provide developers valuable insights and automation to enhance Agentic DevOps, driving innovation and efficiency across the software lifecycle."

The GitHub Copilot coding agent integration builds upon the existing partnership between New Relic and both Microsoft and GitHub. According to New Relic, this expansion brings its agentic AI capabilities and critical observability data deeper into the developer workflow, delivering faster feedback and reducing the risk of code-related issues affecting business operations.

The integration is currently available via New Relic as a limited preview, accessible to Copilot Pro+ and Copilot Enterprise account holders. GitHub Copilot coding agent is also available in preview for GitHub Copilot Enterprise and Pro+ customers.