What is platform engineering and its impact on IT and DevOps?

What is platform engineering and its impact on IT and DevOps?
6 min read
23 November 2023

Platform Engineering focuses on designing, building & maintaining robust and scalable platforms or frameworks that support the development, deployment and management of applications and services. These platforms serve as a foundation for other applications to run on top of, providing a set of tools, services and infrastructure to streamline and accelerate the software development process.

Key aspects of Platform Engineering include:

  • Infrastructure Management: Platform Engineers are responsible for setting up and managing the underlying infrastructure, which may include cloud computing resources, virtual machines, containers, networking and storage. They ensure that the infrastructure is reliable, scalable and optimized for performance.
  • Platform Services: Platform Engineers design services and APIs that developers can use to build applications efficiently. These services may include authentication, logging, monitoring, caching, database access and other common functionalities that applications typically require.
  • Automation and DevOps: Automation plays a crucial role in Platform Engineering. Engineers create tools and workflows that automate tasks like deployment, testing and monitoring. This helps reduce human intervention and ensures consistent and error-free processes. This aligns closely with the principles of DevOps implementation, where development and operations teams collaborate closely to achieve faster and more reliable software delivery. It helps in implementing Infrastructure & Software Delivery Automation Solutions.
  • Security and Compliance: Platform Engineers must prioritize security and compliance requirements to protect the applications running on their platforms. They implement security measures, access controls and encryption to safeguard sensitive data and prevent potential vulnerabilities.
  • Scalability and Performance: Platforms need to be designed keeping scalability in mind. They should be able to handle increasing workloads and user traffic without compromising performance. Platform Engineers employ techniques such as load balancing, horizontal scaling and performance optimization to achieve this.

What is platform engineering and its impact on IT and DevOps?

Cloud Platform Engineering is essential for organizations seeking to accelerate their development cycles and promote consistency across applications. It enables development teams to focus on building features and functionality unique to their applications while relying on a standardized and reliable platform for the underlying infrastructure and services.

How Platform Engineering Bridges the IT and DevOps Gap?

Platform Engineering plays a crucial role in bridging the IT and DevOps divide by fostering collaboration, standardization and automation across the software development lifecycle. Here’s how Platform Engineering achieves this:

  • Standardization of Infrastructure and Services: Platform Engineering establishes a standardized set of infrastructure components and services that can be used by both IT operations teams and development teams. This common foundation eliminates discrepancies and ensures that everyone is working with the same underlying technology stack. It also helps in implementing Infrastructure & Software Delivery Automation Solutions.
  • Automated Provisioning and Deployment: Platform Engineers automate the provisioning and deployment processes. This enables developers to request and access the necessary resources and environments without relying on manual intervention from IT operations. This self-service approach accelerates development cycles and reduces the time required to set up and configure new environments.
  • Collaborative Design and Governance: Platform Engineering involves collaboration between IT operations and development teams in designing the platform. This fosters a shared understanding of requirements, constraints and best practices. Additionally, the platform governance ensures that the platform meets the needs of both teams while adhering to security, compliance and performance standards.
  • Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Platform Engineering enables the seamless setup of CI/CD pipelines that automate the build, test and deployment processes. Developers can seamlessly push code changes into production-like environments, while IT operations can focus on managing the underlying infrastructure. This streamlined approach eliminates friction and ensures a smooth handoff between development and IT operations.
  • Monitoring and Observability: Platform Engineers implement monitoring and observability tools that provide insights into the performance and health of applications and infrastructure. Both IT operations and development teams can access these metrics and collaborate on resolving issues, leading to faster incident response and improved application reliability.
  • Shared Responsibility and Empowerment: Platform Engineering encourages a culture of shared responsibility, where both IT operations and development teams take ownership of their respective areas while collaborating on shared goals. This empowerment promotes trust and facilitates a collective effort to deliver high-quality software.
  • Continuous Improvement: By continuously gathering feedback from both IT operations and development teams, Platform Engineers can make iterative improvements to the platform. Regularly incorporating new technologies, optimizing processes and addressing pain points ensures that the platform remains relevant and valuable to all stakeholders.

Platform Engineering acts as a bridge between IT operations and DevOps by creating a standardized, automated and collaborative environment. This shared platform empowers both teams to work together efficiently, breaking down silos and aligning their efforts to deliver software faster, more reliably and with higher quality.

Platform Engineering often involves implementing containerization technologies like Docker and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. Containers provide consistency across development and production environments, while orchestration tools allow for automated scaling, self-healing and easy management of containerized applications. Opting for a reputed Kubernetes management solutions provider helps enterprises in hassle-free and secure Kubernetes management. 

Introducing Platform Engineering Services: Accelerating Your Success!

Are you looking to build, scale or optimize a robust platform to support your business’s growth and success? Look no further! Opt for OpsTree’s Cloud Platform Engineering services. Our services are tailored to meet your unique needs and empower your organization to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Our team of engineers brings a lot of experience in designing and developing cutting-edge platforms across various industries. 

For More Info: Please Visit Here 

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Lency Orien 0
Hi, I'm Lency Orien, a DevOps consultant at OpsTree Solutions. We specialize in helping businesses improve their software development and delivery processes thr...
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