What Platform Engineering is (and what it isn’t).

Platform Engineering is really taking off in the industry, but you might be wondering, what’s the big deal? In this post, we’re breaking it all down: what Platform Engineering actually is, why it matters, how companies are jumping on board and what’s driving its growing popularity.

What Platform Engineering is?

As explained in the whitepaper released by the CNCF, Platform Engineering has begun to emerge in enterprises as an explicit form of the cross-functional cooperation promised by DevOps. Platforms curate and present foundational capabilities, frameworks and experiences to facilitate and accelerate the work of internal customers, the developer teams.

Therefore, Platform Engineering is a socio-technical discipline focused on designing, building, and maintaining internal software platforms that support modern digital enterprises.
It aims to reduce cognitive load on developers by providing a self-service, standardized and consistent infrastructure that enhances productivity and allows teams to focus on delivering business value.

At its core, Platform Engineering offers reusable tools, frameworks and environments that streamline the development and deployment of applications. This self-service approach empowers developers to independently access and utilize platform capabilities, driving faster innovation and higher-quality software delivery.
Beyond the technical aspects, Platform Engineering fosters a cultural shift within organizations. It encourages collaboration, continuous improvement, and shared responsibility across teams.

By standardizing processes and reducing operational complexity, Platform Engineering not only enhances productivity but also ensures that the platform evolves in alignment with the organization's goals, ultimately enabling teams to deliver greater business value.

Why is Platform Engineering necessary?

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, organizations face a multitude of challenges that can impede their ability to deliver software efficiently and consistently. Platform Engineering emerges as a critical solution to address these challenges by providing a structured, scalable approach to software delivery. Here are the key reasons why Platform Engineering is necessary:

1. Managing the complexity of modern platforms.

• Modern digital platforms are required to support a wide array of capabilities, from scalability and security to observability and automation. As organizations adopt cloud-native architectures, microservices, and other advanced technologies, the complexity of these platforms increases exponentially. This complexity can overwhelm development teams, making it difficult to maintain high standards and deliver new features quickly.
• How Platform Engineering helps: Platform Engineering simplifies this complexity by creating standardized, reusable tools and environments. By abstracting away the underlying infrastructure, Platform Engineering allows development teams to focus on building and delivering software, rather than managing the intricacies of the platform itself.

2. The need for refocus and alignment.

• As platforms grow more complex, the cognitive load on developers increases. Developers are often required to manage not only their code but also the infrastructure it runs on, the security configurations it requires, and the deployment processes that bring it to production. This cognitive load can lead to burnout, reduced productivity, and more errors.
• How Platform Engineering helps: by providing a well-designed, self-service platform, Platform Engineering significantly reduces the cognitive load on development teams. Developers can rely on the platform’s capabilities to handle infrastructure, security, and deployment concerns, allowing them to focus on writing code and delivering business value.

3. Promoting a new mindset in platform development.

• Traditional approaches to platform development often treat platforms as static projects with a defined start and finish. However, the dynamic nature of modern software development requires a shift in this mindset. Platforms must be viewed as products that evolve continuously based on user feedback, technological advancements, and changing business needs.
• How Platform Engineering helps: Platform Engineering instills a product mindset, where the platform is seen as an ever-evolving entity. The platform team iterates on the platform, incorporating feedback from developers and other stakeholders to ensure it remains relevant, efficient and aligned with the organization’s objectives. This approach not only improves the platform itself but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement across the organization.

4. Ensuring compliance, security, and non-functional requirements.

• In highly regulated industries or organizations with stringent security and compliance requirements, ensuring that all software products meet these standards can be a significant challenge. Each product must adhere to a consistent set of security protocols, performance benchmarks, and compliance regulations.
• How Platform Engineering helps: Platform Engineering integrates these requirements directly into the platform, ensuring that every application built on it automatically complies with necessary standards. This approach reduces the risk of non-compliance, enhances security, and ensures that non-functional requirements such as performance and reliability are consistently met.

Then, as mentioned by Rachael Wonnacott, “what are the main reasons to build a platform?”

What is driving demand for Platform Engineering?

Platform Engineering is rapidly gaining traction as organizations seek to enhance their ability to deliver business value efficiently. As we look ahead to 2024, the momentum behind Platform Engineering is expected to grow significantly, driven by its potential to streamline development processes, reduce cognitive load on developers, and improve overall operational efficiency.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, approximately 80% of software engineering organizations will have established platform teams. These teams will serve as internal providers of reusable services, components, and tools, underscoring the increasing importance of Platform Engineering in modern tech environments.

Gartner highlights that the ability of Platform Engineering to deliver a seamless self-service experience for both developers and business partners is a key factor in its rising adoption. In an era of rapid technological and market changes, this flexibility and responsiveness are crucial for organizations aiming to stay ahead of the curve.

According to the “State of Platform Engineering v2” Platform Engineering has entered the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” on the new Gartner Software Engineering Hype Cycle. This is the second of five phases that make up the hype cycle, and is used to describe innovations that show an increase in product usage, but where there’s still more hype than proof that the innovation can deliver what organizations need to deliver value.

Several key factors are fueling the adoption of Platform Engineering:

• Boosting developer productivity. One of the primary drivers is the need to enhance developer productivity. Organizations are increasingly recognizing that a well-designed platform can free developers from mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on delivering innovative solutions.
• Optimizing CI/CD pipelines. Efficient continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines are essential for modern software development. Platform Engineering facilitates the implementation and management of these pipelines, making it easier for teams to deploy code swiftly and reliably.
• Standardizing tools and processes. As organizations grow, the need for standardized tools and processes becomes critical. Platform Engineering addresses this by providing a consistent framework that ensures all teams are aligned, reducing the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
• Enhancing security. In an era where security threats are increasingly sophisticated, Platform Engineering plays a crucial role in embedding security best practices into the development lifecycle, helping organizations protect their applications and data.
• Adopting Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). The rise of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) methodologies is another significant factor. Platform Engineering supports IaC by enabling the automation of infrastructure management, ensuring that environments are consistent, scalable, and easy to manage.

Looking toward 2024 and beyond, Platform Engineering is set to become a strategic cornerstone for software engineering teams, offering the tools and frameworks needed to navigate the complexities of modern software development effectively.