Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last: The Power of Platform Engineering
Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last: The Power of Platform Engineering
In today's constantly changing world, speed is of the essence. Large organizations that develop their own software and applications often struggle with challenges such as long time-to-market and slow release processes. Add strict compliance requirements and the desire to break organizational silos, and it becomes clear that these companies need new solutions. This is where platform engineering comes in - an approach that allows development teams to focus on their core tasks, accelerating innovation.
Creation date :
Return to Focus and Specialization
Imagine developers as artists, creating masterpieces on a canvas. Platform engineering provides them with the brushes, paint and canvas so they can focus entirely on their art without distraction. Gartner predicts that by 2026, some 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams. These teams act as internal suppliers of reusable application delivery services, components and tools. A self-service portal is established and maintained so that the feature teams can deploy services independently without depending on the platform engineering team.
The goal is to improve developers' user experience and productivity by handling non-functional requirements as much as possible. This allows feature teams to focus on what they do best: developing new features. Anything not within a team's expertise is taken out of their hands, allowing them to focus on their core business.
The Origins of Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is the evolution of DevOps, the next step in this methodology. While DevOps works great for small teams, it quickly becomes too complex for larger Organizations. This is where the need for platform engineering comes in.
Platform engineering emerged in response to the increasing complexity of modern software architectures. In larger organizations, coordination between different teams is crucial. This requires setting up an internal developer portal, providing scripts and templates, and ensuring compliance with security and corporate guidelines. Teams simply need to be able to run scripts without worrying about the underlying complexity. Platform teams prevent other teams from reinventing the wheel by addressing common problems over and over again.
The Benefits of Platform Engineering
Platform engineering offers numerous benefits. Consider templates for change management and release management, which ensures a streamlined and controlled process. Compliance becomes much more manageable as everything is done in a controlled and automated manner. Platform engineering also offers great benefits in terms of governance. It strengthens collaboration and communication between teams. This communication takes place through the Internal Developer Portal (IDP) or through platform syncs (moments of alignment between the platform engineering team and the other teams).
The result is impressive: Organizations that used to do releases every three months can now roll out new updates every two weeks or even faster. This is not because of better technology, but because of a more efficient process.
Get Guidance on Setting Up a Platform Engineering Team
We are there for you as a partner, tailored to your needs. We can unburden you with Managed Services under the form of Application Platform Services (APS), which are particularly suitable for smaller Customers. For larger Organizations, dedicated teams are available, which can exist on their own or set up as a blended team if customer ownership is crucial.
We also provide proactive services by presenting monthly platform value through dashboards and making recommendations for potential new value. This provides valuable dialogue and makes the business value of a platform team visible.
