Platform engineering tools help software development teams build and deploy apps faster without breaking things. Instead of developers managing complex infrastructure, platform engineering tools create easy self-service options.
Modern software development teams face a big challenge. How do you move fast without breaking things? Apps get more complex every day. Deployment gets harder. Developers spend less time writing code and creating new features and tools, and spend more time fighting with infrastructure.
Platform engineering is becoming a must-have for companies serious about software development. Traditional DevOps makes the development team handle infrastructure management.
In this article, we look at the five core categories of platform engineering tools, seven of the most important and valuable that most teams need, and consider the future of platform engineering in this age of AI and AI Copilots.
Key Takeaways:
- Platform engineering tools simplify infrastructure with automation.
- The best platform engineering tools integrate CI/CD, security, and monitoring into one workflow.
- Having the right toolset improves speed, safety, and cost efficiency.
What Are Platform Engineering Tools?
Platform engineering tools are special technologies. They support Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs). Think of them as building blocks. They create a smooth, automated path from code to production.
These tools are different from general DevOps tools. They focus on developer self-service. They keep operations simple. Platform engineering tools hide complexity.
Integration is the key. The best platform engineering tools don't just work well alone. They connect with each other, and everything in your tech stack. This creates a unified experience. Your infrastructure tool talks to your CI/CD pipeline. This connects to your monitoring system. Magic happens.
A senior platform engineer can set up these connections. Then developers get what they need. They don't need to know about the underlying complexity unless necessary.
Now, let’s look at the core categories of platform engineering tools.
5 Core Categories of Platform Engineering Tools
Below are the five most crucial types of platform engineering tools.
1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools let you define your cloud infrastructure using code. You don't need to click through various interfaces, but can directly design and code your environment and infrastructures. Tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation can help you do this. Your infrastructure becomes repeatable. It's version-controlled. It's trackable.
For platform engineering teams, IaC is the foundation. It makes everything else possible. You can spin up identical environments with a single command. A DevOps engineer can write these templates once. The whole development team can use them.
2. CI/CD Orchestration
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools automate your development process. They handle the journey from code commit to production deployment. Tools include Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Argo CD, and FluxCD. These create automated workflows.
Modern CI/CD follows the GitOps model. Your Git repository becomes the single source of truth. It holds both application code and deployment configuration management. Developers push code, and the pipeline automatically builds, tests, and deploys their changes.
The best CI/CD tools, like DuploCloud, integrate deeply with your infrastructure and security tools. These prevent problems before they reach production. This workflow helps the operations team and development teams work more efficiently.
3. Container Orchestration and Management
Container orchestration platforms manage your applications at scale. They handle service discovery. They do automatic scaling. They self-heal when things go wrong. Tools like Kubernetes, OpenShift, and Nomad do this. These tools are essential for managing cloud resources well.
These tools are powerful. But they can be complex to set up and manage. Platform engineering tools make this simpler. Tools like Kubernetes can provide pre-configured, secure-by-default container environments.
4. Security and Compliance Automation
Security tools embed compliance and security controls directly into your development lifecycle. Useful security tools include but aren’t limited to HashiCorp Vault, Open Policy Agent (OPA), and Aqua Security. The platform engineering team can set these up once for the whole organization.
The goal is "shift-left security." You catch issues early when they're cheap and easy to fix. Instead of discovering them in production. Policy-as-code tools let you define security and compliance rules.
5. Observability and Monitoring
Observability tools collect and show metrics, logs, and traces. They help you understand how your applications behave in production. Observability tools include Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Jaeger, and OpenTelemetry. Application performance monitoring is crucial for healthy systems.
Great platform engineering doesn't just deploy applications. It ensures you can monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize them over time. The best observability tools integrate with your deployment pipeline.
DuploCloud includes extensive and robust observability tools for application, environment, and platform performance monitoring.
7 Top Platform Engineering Tools
Below are seven of the most useful platform engineering tools for DevOps teams and software engineers.
1. DuploCloud
DuploCloud combines multiple tools into one AI-powered DevOps platform.
DuploCloud includes IaC, CI/CD, security automation, compliance, and observability. These numerous integrations reduce time-to-market and operational complexity. Automation is embedded throughout.
DuploCloud makes platform engineering accessible to teams of any size. It helps both senior platform engineers and developers of every kind work more effectively.
Ready to see how DuploCloud can streamline your platform engineering journey? Schedule a demo to explore our integrated approach.
2. Terraform
Terraform is one of the most popular IaC tools.
It provisions resources across multiple cloud providers. Its declarative syntax and extensive provider ecosystem make it a foundation for many platform engineering implementations.
3. Jenkins
Jenkins is an extensible CI/CD automation server.
It has thousands of plugins. It's older than some alternatives. However, Jenkins remains popular for teams that need as much customization and control over their software builds and automated workflows.
4. Kubernetes
Kubernetes (K8s) is the standard for container orchestration.
It provides powerful features for scaling, self-healing, and service discovery. But it requires significant expertise to operate well. The majority of platform engineering teams use Kubernetes to manage their cloud infrastructure. And even if you aren’t using it directly, it’s normally integrated in other tools.
5. Open Policy Agent (OPA)
OPA is a policy-as-code framework.
It lets you enforce governance and compliance rules across your entire stack. OPA integrates with most major platform engineering tools. OPA provides consistent policy enforcement across your internal platform.
6. HashiCorp Vault
HashiCorp Vault is a secret management and data encryption solution.
It secures sensitive information like API keys, passwords, and certificates. Vault integrates with most CI/CD and deployment tools. It provides secure, automated secret management for your development team.
7. IBM Kubecost (Apptio)
IBM Kubecost is a specialized Kubernetes cost monitoring and optimization tool.
It provides detailed insights into your container spending. It helps identify optimization opportunities. This helps the operations team manage cloud resource costs well.
Next, let’s look at how you can pick and choose the right platform engineering tools for your business and team.
How to Choose the Right Platform Engineering Tools
Start by understanding your organization's development, operational, revenue, and compliance requirements. A healthcare company building HIPAA-compliant applications has health, patient experience, and security and compliance needs.
A fintech startup racing to market has different considerations, more focused on the user experience (UX), and financial compliance and security. Your platform engineering team needs to consider these requirements when selecting tools.
It’s important to consider the balance between developer flexibility and platform standardization. This means weighing the two factors:
- Too much flexibility leads to chaos and inconsistency.
- Too much standardization slows innovation. It frustrates your development team.
Choosing the right platform can’t be rushed. You need to consider a lot of factors, including the tools you’re already using and gaps that need filling. Or the pain points developers are frequently encountering and how to solve them.
Ready to see how DuploCloud can streamline your platform engineering journey? Schedule a demo to explore our integrated approach.
What is the Future of Platform Engineering?
Platform engineering continues evolving rapidly. AI-assisted provisioning is already helping platforms automatically optimize configurations. AI tools will predict issues before they occur.
All of this will make the workflow even smoother for software development teams. Whether you build or buy your platform engineering solution, focus on three things
- Integrations
- Developer experience
- Long-term maintainability.
The tools that win are those that disappear into the background. You don’t need to worry about them; they simply work, and let your developers focus on creating value for your customers. When better software development practices are possible, the software that goes live and develops is of a higher quality.
Platform Engineering Tools Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What's the difference between DevOps tools and platform engineering tools?
DevOps tools typically require developers to understand infrastructure concepts. They manage deployment complexity themselves. Platform engineering tools hide this complexity behind self-service interfaces. This way, developers can focus on application development instead of the complexities of building, maintaining, and managing environments.
Platform teams handle operational concerns. This separation helps both the development team and operations team work better.
How does GitOps fit into platform engineering?
GitOps serves as the operational model for platform engineering. It uses Git as the single source of truth for both application code and infrastructure configuration management.
Platform engineering tools implement GitOps principles. They provide automated, auditable deployments. This improves the overall development process and workflow for the entire development team.
Which platform engineering tool should a team start with first?
Most teams start with Infrastructure as Code (like Terraform) since it lays the foundation for repeatable, automated environments.
