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Platform engineering has been acknowledged as a foremost technology trend for 2023. 51% of organizations that have already implemented platform engineering within the last three years claim that platform engineering catalyzes their overall IT agility and optimization. Platform engineering is undeniably a noteworthy trend. But how could your organization go beyond the manifesto hype and uncover its hidden value? Before that, take a moment to understand what platform engineering means.
What is platform engineering?
Platform engineering entails building and delivering scalable IT platforms that provide self-service capabilities to your organization in the cloud-native era. Typically, platform engineering initiatives adopt cloud principles (scale, automation, and infrastructure as code) to build a software engineering ecosystem. As a result, platform engineering empowers your organization to establish an integrated software engineering ecosystem that is tailored to the unique needs of your software development- or product teams: autonomy, speed and scale.
What are the hidden gems beyond the hashtag?
#PlatformEngineering is here to stay. The question is: How would it generate value for your organization? It’s time to roll up your sleeves and become treasure diggers to uncover the hidden gems behind this trending hashtag.
- Turn your busy developers into happy developers
The DevOps philosophy (“you build it, you run it”), which requires developers to build and run their application infrastructure end-to-end, has been for a while. However, with the ever-growing list of tools that developers need to master to build and run their applications, cognitive load is a non-negligible problem in your organization. That is where platform engineering comes into play.
Platform engineering practices provide teams with reusable building blocks and easy-to-use capabilities, enabling them to take control of everything it takes to deliver and operate a great product. Developers can thus benefit from a set of internal self-service tools to write the code, build, test and deploy the app and release it to users with observability and operational aspects already in place, resulting in increased productivity and happiness while reducing cognitive load. Skilled developers are scarce, and any decrease in cognitive load means your organization has a higher chance of attracting and retaining talent.
- Speed without compromising quality
Platform engineering serves as the engine that ignites your organization’s software delivery velocity. With its self-service APIs, tools, and services, as well as the knowledge and support, your internal IT platform puts your development teams into the F1 driver's seat so that they can deliver product features at a faster speed.
Most importantly, speed without compromising quality is the holy grail that every organization desires. The magic about platform engineering is that your developers are not only enabled to deliver fast, but they also get all the necessary quality checks, tools and feedback loops as part of the platform service. As a result, your organization can speed up the delivery of newly developed features to end users without compromising quality.
- Ensure software reliability, security, and compliance across engineering teams
Apart from delivery speed and quality, IT engineering teams face additional challenges, such as reliability, security, and compliance.
The platform engineering team provides observability tools and operational insights to boost visibility so teams can react quickly to any incidents. In addition, they would also codify the essential security and compliance policies for cloud infrastructure management, ensuring software security and compliance for all platform users, whether one team or an entire enterprise.
Platform engineering creates a harmonious balance between the developer’s autonomy and business governance, resulting in exceptional operational performance.
- Optimize cloud utilization for maximum efficiency and minimal cost
Are you overwhelmed by the never-ending cloud bill and unnecessary consumption of cloud resources? Rest assured! Platform engineering paves the way towards more sustainable and efficient cloud utilization.
The platform engineering team is committed to designing your system with cloud-native principles, thus reducing costs while improving overall system efficiency. Firstly, the cloud architecture is reviewed, and the right tools that best fit your organization’s demands are selected to standardize development processes. On top of that, with the cloud principle of automation, the platform engineering team focuses on automating infrastructure operations, which minimizes operational costs and eliminates repetitive manual tasks.
Efficient usage of cloud-native patterns also means a reduction of the carbon footprint in the cloud and data travelling a shorter distance across the network. The industry has adopted the term "GreenOps" to embody all the practices that take the planet into account while utilizing the cloud.
Platform engineering enables your IT team to scale up efficiently, achieve cost-efficiency through standardization, and contribute to your organization's overall sustainable development goals.
Conclusion:
To summarize, platform engineering supports both organizational and technical objectives. Trending practices like platform engineering offer incredible potential. But bear in mind, that shifts in workplace culture and mindset are also needed to unlock its full potential.
Interested in learning more about platform engineering? Check our Platform Engineering service page.