We are introducing the emerging trend as a strategic approach to accelerate digital transformation.
Agility, efficiency, and innovation are fundamental pillars for business success. That’s why the methodology known as Platform Engineering has been gaining prominence in technology delivery.
As companies seek ways to expedite the development and implementation of solutions, Platform Engineering emerges as a means to achieve this by transcending conventional software development methods.
Its key differentiator is its focus on building a cohesive and flexible environment capable of supporting the organization’s entire technological ecosystem.
Its scope ranges from infrastructure to automation, integrating with advanced development practices and ensuring operational efficiency throughout the application lifecycle.
This article will explore this strategy, its operation, and its impact on organizations’ digital transformation.
What is Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering is an emerging technological approach to responding to the increasing complexity of software development. It involves organizing one or more teams to create and maintain tools and services shared among them, referred to as a “platform.”
This platform may vary, existing in cloud infrastructures or even on-premises environments. However, its primary goal is to provide developers with an environment that simplifies everyday tasks, thereby maximizing productivity.
The secret of the approach lies in adopting a customer-driven vision, focusing on the end-user—developers—as its “customer.”
The platform’s role is to reduce friction in the development process. To achieve this, it should serve as an interface that facilitates access to reusable tools and services and simplifies the use of more complex structures, such as deployment pipelines, monitoring, and container orchestration.
Platform Engineering, therefore, encompasses a broad vision, aiming to create a cohesive ecosystem that enables rapid innovation and efficient delivery of technological solutions.
Thus, Platform Engineering plays a crucial role in organizations’ digital transformation, enabling them to adapt quickly to changes in the business environment and respond agilely to customer demands.
Gartner estimates that by 2028, 80% of large software developers will have dedicated platform engineering teams.
How does Platform Engineering work?
Due to its highly customized nature, the way Platform Engineering evolves in an organization will depend significantly on the needs of its end users—developers.
The initial starting point for Platform Engineering typically involves creating an Internal Developer Portal (IDP). This portal is where resources will be made available to users/developers.
As mentioned earlier, establishing this portal requires a dedicated team that acts as if they were creating a product, but their purpose is to serve an internal audience.
An IDP typically includes tools, services, components, and a shared knowledge base. It should be built to be user-friendly and in a self-service format, reducing cognitive load without compromising the integrity of the expected workflow. It is a platform that combines everything from code libraries and documentation to deployment automation and application rollback.
The platform should facilitate the product pipeline from development and testing to deployment and monitoring. It reduces friction by decreasing users’ cognitive load and reducing the need for interaction with different platforms and teams to obtain information and development resources.
What are the requirements for successful Platform Engineering?
Your team’s successful implementation of Platform Engineering requires considering and integrating several essential requirements, ranging from infrastructure to development and security practices.
Here are some of the critical factors for the success of a Platform Engineering framework:
Simple and powerful user experience
An optimized experience is critical to getting the best performance from developers and making them comfortable at their expertise level. Utilize a variety of approaches to provide an ideal user/developer experience. This may include:
- Infrastructure code libraries (reusable code snippets).
- Infrastructure CLIs.
- Shared Infrastructure as Code (IaC) templates.
Automation as standard
Automation reduces errors. Using tools that allow for automating resources, configurations, and environments, among other things, not only aids productivity but also ensures traceability through version control.
For the platform to be effective, teams must already be well-established in using such tools and workflows.
Full visibility
The organization must be able to log, monitor, and observe the entire infrastructure for greater operational control. This enables risk reduction, cost optimization, and understanding of other system and user behavior metrics.
Security as standard
Access to shared resources must be convenient and accompanied by good security standards. Thus, the company avoids exposure to security risks and leaks.
Adhering to application security precepts, such as refined access control integrated into developers’ workflows, is necessary.
Best practices as a culture
When building shareable components, they must be thought out following the best development practices. Therefore, teams must have development best practices as part of their culture and be capable of creating components with high availability and low operational maintenance.
Benefits of Platform Engineering
Adopting this operational approach offers several significant benefits to organizations, providing a solid foundation for efficient and continuous technology delivery.
Below are some of the key benefits associated with the successful implementation of this approach in companies’ technology areas:
Fast and efficient delivery
Continuous automation and operational efficiency result in shorter development cycles and faster software delivery, allowing organizations to respond agilely to changes in market demands.
Simplified scalability
Practices such as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) make scalability easier. Platforms can quickly adapt to demand peaks, ensuring more consistent performance.
Increased reliability
Integrated observability and monitoring practices ensure a comprehensive view of platform performance. This results in excellent reliability, as issues can be identified and proactively resolved before affecting users.
Cost reduction
Operational tasks can be automated, and resource utilization can be optimized, leading to a significant reduction in operational costs. Additionally, efficient scalability avoids unnecessary investments in infrastructure.
Enhanced security
The continuous integration of security practices from the beginning of development ensures that security is a central consideration. It protects the platform against external cyber threats and other vulnerabilities, ensuring data integrity and user trust.
Flexibility and adaptation
Microservices architecture and automation enable greater flexibility. Thus, organizations can easily adapt their platforms to incorporate new features and technologies or adjust to changes in business needs.
Effective collaboration
Promoting a collaborative culture, typical of the DevOps environment, facilitates communication between development, operations, and security teams. This results in a more cohesive work environment where solutions are created and maintained.
Facilitates continuous innovation
Platform Engineering provides a solid foundation for continuous innovation, allowing organizations to experiment with new ideas and quickly implement different features. All of this is crucial in a dynamic business environment.
Conclusion
Amid the technology sector’s challenges, Platform Engineering emerges as a strong ally for innovation continuity. By reducing the high complexity of development through cognitive load reduction, automation as an ally, and centralized collaboration, companies have found a path to productivity.
However, this implementation comes without technological and cultural challenges. Even within the same company, different teams may have different needs.
Thus, Platform Engineering also involves a process of continuous understanding and improvement within internal development cycles.
Due to its solid organizational and strategic aspects, Platform Engineering has become established among companies seeking to optimize their development cycles.
