Modern cloud-native architectures are complex. Developers must grapple with a growing array of tools and frameworks along with infrastructure provisioning, configuration management and more. This complexity is causing “cognitive overload” among developers — there’s simply too much information for them to process. Even the brightest, most experienced developers struggle to maintain productivity.
Enter platform engineering. This emerging discipline is designed to improve productivity by enhancing the developer experience. Platform engineering creates layers of abstraction that mask some of the complexity of the cloud-native environment. It also provides developers with a curated set of self-service tools that streamline tasks and optimize workflows.
Platform engineering builds on the DevOps model, which is designed to accelerate software delivery by bringing development and operations functions together. In a true DevOps environment, developers should be able to deploy and run their applications from end to end. In practice, however, organizations have struggled to achieve this goal.
A 2020 study by Puppet found that top-performing development organizations had a separate team dedicated to building an Internal Developer Platform (IDP). These subject-matter experts select the tools and functionality that each development team needs and package them in a way that is easy to consume.
An IDP isn’t an off-the-shelf, out-of-the-box product. It’s a highly customized solution developed by a team of engineers and product managers. The platform engineering team conducts research, analyzes workflows, and develops roadmaps in order to assemble the right set of tools and present them in a logical, cohesive manner. The team also solicits feedback and continually finetunes the IDP to optimize the developer experience.
The primary objectives of platform engineering are to boost developer productivity, improve quality and increase the velocity of software delivery. Platform engineering teams are tasked with optimizing each step of software development. The IDP reduces cognitive overload through standardization and self-service tools. Developers gain greater control over configuration and deployment, enabling them to become more creative without concern that they’ll break things.
In addition, platform engineering creates a culture of collaboration and qualitative and quantitative feedback. This helps the platform engineering team identify and solve problems shared by multiple teams. Platform engineering teams also become a resource for best practices.
Security should be incorporated into the platform engineering model. Platform engineering teams should integrate vulnerability scanning tools into the IDP and establish processes to help meet security benchmarks. A robust governance framework can help enforce software and tool version controls and maintain security and compliance throughout the development environment.
Platform engineering helps organizations maximize the benefits of automation. While DevOps automates discrete tasks at the team level, platform engineering brings automation and self-service to the entire development organization. It enables organizations to automate many development tasks in a standardized way, increasing efficiency, minimizing errors, and further enhancing security and compliance.
Generative AI is the next frontier of platform engineering. By incorporating GenAI into IDPs, platform engineering teams can elevate it from an ad hoc tool to a game-changing element of the development process. Tools such as ChatGPT can create configuration files, develop code snippets, produce documentation and more.
Gartner predicts that 80 percent of large software development organizations will implement platform engineering by 2026. If platform engineering is on your strategic roadmap, Technologent can help. We have a team that focuses on IT automation, with specific expertise in DevOps. Our X-as-a-Service team can help you assemble the right cloud-based development tools. We also have a dedicated AI practice. Let our integrated, cross-functional experts help you develop and implement a platform engineering strategy.