What is platform engineering?

Let’s first start with a definition of software engineering to add some context. Software engineering is the discipline of designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications using systematic methodologies and engineering principles.

It encompasses a set of technical and managerial activities that ensure software products meet requirements, function efficiently, and are built to evolve with changing needs.

Today, software engineering is characterized by agile and DevOps practices that promote swift, iterative development and continuous delivery.

Emphasizing collaboration, they employ practices like code reviews and version control systems to manage changes and facilitate teamwork. With a focus on user experience, software engineering also integrates security from the get-go, ensuring software meets modern expectations of functionality, responsiveness, and safety.

As a foundation, software engineering provides the tools and frameworks that platform engineering builds upon to create integrated development environments and systems.

Platform engineering in the context of Internal Developer Portals

Platform engineering is at the heart of software delivery’s future, and it’s a field dedicated to establishing Internal Developer Portals (IDPs).

So, what is an IDP?

Manjunath Bhat, (VP Analyst at Gartner®) has defined IDPs’ in his 2022 report, A Software Engineering Leader’s Guide to Improving Developer Experience (August 2022), where he stated that:

“Internal developer portals serve as the interface through which developers can discover and access internal developer platform capabilities.”

The internal developer platform capabilities he refers to revolve around the concept of “platform orchestration”. Specifically, capabilities that integrate multiple technologies and tools to automate and standardize repeatable processes – without impeding developers’ ability to innovate freely. Examples of such processes are CI/CD tooling and infrastructure provisioning.

Developer platform capabilities are a subset of the overall solution that a Platform Engineer enables, and the full value of the solution cannot be realized without the portal. IDPs serve software engineering teams by providing the self-service tools essential for a cloud-native development journey.

Essentially, an IDP is a custom toolset, inclusive of services and infrastructure, built to equip developers with what they need to craft, assess, launch, and maintain software applications, all while being finely tuned to the unique objectives and requirements of their organization.

To put it simply, in the cloud-centric landscape of today, platform engineering is essentially scaling up the practices of DevOps.

Without consistent standards across an organization, teams often select various tools and establish unique workflows, resulting in a complex and difficult-to-secure system that lacks efficiency.

Platform engineering tackles these issues by constructing internal platforms that serve the broader needs of the organization. A specialized team delivers crucial infrastructure, providing smooth deployments, continuous integration and delivery, and managed services through self-service capability enablement. This integration enables new projects to integrate effortlessly, eliminating the need to build from the ground up.

By focusing on the creation of robust, enterprise-scale IDPs, platform engineering is positioned to tackle the most pressing issues that today’s software engineering teams face, especially concerning the complexity of technologies and tools that can hamper developer efficiency and contribute to operational backlog.

Efficient IDPs do more than just streamline the process of delivering software; they are designed to foster a culture of consistency and empower developers at every step, from the start of a project till its end.

This empowerment and repeatable process automation significantly enhances developers’ productivity by cutting down on operational dependencies, freeing them to do what they do best – write code.

Such a refined process can reduce the time it takes for companies to get their products to market by up 50% (or, 2-4 months, depending on their level of existing automation and streamlined processes before implementing an IDP), enable more frequent releases, and speed up lead times. As a result, this boosts revenue and allows companies to swiftly adapt to an ever-evolving marketplace.

Example of using an IDP and Data Fabric Studio

An example of this is how NatureSweet utilized the Calibo platform, which halved their development time to only 4-5 months per digital product. The accuracy of yield predictions increased leveraging robust and customizable AI/ML models within the platform.                                         

The introduction of automated systems allows a more insightful correlation of multiple variables, paving the way for dependable and consistently precise predictions. Such an increase in accuracy not only armed NatureSweet with better insights but also enabled them to take proactive steps in honing their operations.

“Instead of building our own digital ecosystem—which would have taken 12-18 months before we could begin solving business problems—we were able to start within 8 weeks, thanks to Calibo’s platform. For one application, we improved yield forecasting by 6%, resulting in millions of USD in savings within the first three quarters after implementation.”

Noé Angel, Global Head, Chief Information Officer, NatureSweet.

How did platform engineering develop?

A quick walk down memory lane: DevOps has revolutionized the way application teams operate, equipping them to manage the full life cycle of a domain—building, testing, releasing, maintaining, and operating.

However, as you delve deeper into the operational stack, you encounter numerous instances of repetitive work across the company, plus, a fragmented technology landscape and rapid change. Application teams are required to quickly deliver value, not to become experts in managing Kubernetes, creating multi-cloud setups, or handling the intricacies of security and compliance.

And, as the movement towards cloud-native solutions accelerates, these responsibilities have grown heavier for release teams. Enter the internal developer platform team – heroes of the modern engineering workflow! The essence of platform engineering lies in crafting the processes, tools, platforms, and guides that enable product teams to deliver business value efficiently.

Platform engineers operate on the horizontal axis, addressing widespread organizational needs, thus empowering vertical application teams to focus on serving their end users. Their objective is to eliminate the daunting task of each team mastering the nuances of cloud-native operations, facilitating their operations with minimal mental load or duplication of effort, and ideally, diminishing the need for constant approval.

A core objective of platform engineering is to promote self-service capabilities that improve developer efficiency, enabling them to work autonomously, and not have to be reliant on others or external processes to deliver.

While the platform engineering team focuses on the cloud platform/services, application teams aren’t exempt from responsibilities such as security. Rather, they’re afforded streamlined avenues to integrate and manage security measures automatically.

Mirroring a concept inspired by Netflix’s philosophy of facilitating rather than blocking progress, platform engineers strive to carve out ‘golden pathways’. They provide a curated choice of vetted tools, resources, and computing options that application teams can leverage to deploy their applications efficiently.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The primary goal of platform engineering is to enhance self-service functionalities that boost developer productivity, allowing them to operate independently and avoid dependence on others or outside procedures for delivery.
• Platform engineering sits at the center of the future for software deployment, focused on the creation of Internal Developer Portals (IDPs).
• Internal developer portals serve as the interface through which developers can discover and access internal developer platform capabilities.

To learn more about Calibo’s IDPs, have a look at one of our factsheets.

Or, if you are further down the line and know what you’re looking for, speak to one of our friendly team here.