What is Platform Engineering?

Let's talk about a revolution happening right in front of us: Platform Engineering. But first — do you know what it actually is?

Platform Engineering is an emerging approach in software development focused on creating and maintaining a platform that makes developers' work easier. This platform provides the tools, processes and infrastructure developers need to build, test and deploy applications more efficiently and effectively.

Platform Engineering is about creating environments that let developers focus on what really matters: the code, the business. If you stop and think about it, we don't want our devs burning time on configs, infrastructure and all those details that, while essential, can become a daily drag, right?

Key traits of Platform Engineering

1. Automation: involves creating automated pipelines for CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery), cutting manual work and minimizing human error.
2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): uses tooling and scripts to manage and provision infrastructure through code, ensuring consistency and reproducibility.
3. Observability: implements monitoring, logging and tracing systems to guarantee visibility and health of applications and infrastructure.
4. Self-Service: provides interfaces and tools so developers can request resources and services without having to depend directly on ops teams.
5. Scalability and resilience: designs the platform to support automatic scaling and high availability.

Comparison with DevOps

While DevOps is a culture and practice that aims to unify and automate processes between development and operations teams, Platform Engineering can be seen as an evolution or specialization within that context. It focuses specifically on building internal platforms that make it easier for developers to adhere to DevOps principles.

Benefits of Platform Engineering

1. Efficiency: reduces the time needed to provision and configure development, testing and production environments.
2. Consistency: ensures every team uses the same tools and processes, reducing discrepancies and errors.
3. Delivery speed: increases the speed at which new features reach the market through automated pipelines.
4. Focus on core business: lets developers focus more on creating business value instead of worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

Practical example

Imagine a company that develops several web and mobile applications. That company's Platform Engineering team would create an internal platform that includes:

• CI/CD pipelines configured with automated integration for tests, builds and deploys.
• Infrastructure-as-code templates for provisioning cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Centralized monitoring and logging tools.
• Self-service portals where developers can request new test or production environments in just a few clicks.

This way, the development team can focus on writing code and implementing new features, while the Platform Engineering team makes sure the infrastructure and processes are robust and efficient.

The new chapter of DevOps?

Platform Engineering is often viewed as the next step in DevOps evolution. It adds an extra layer of abstraction and automation that lets DevOps principles be applied even more efficiently and at greater scale. By centralizing and standardizing development practices and tools, companies can reach a higher level of DevOps maturity, leading to faster and more reliable delivery.

Now tell me — are you using these practices today? What were the biggest challenges you faced? What about the benefits? Let's open up this space to exchange experiences and learn from each other.

Here at CloudScript we implement a complete Platform Engineering setup with agility to accelerate your business. If efficiency is what you're after, get in touch — we'd be glad to help.

Originally published at https://blog.cloudscript.com.br on July 2, 2024.