Platform engineering simplifies software development by consolidating common engineering resources into a single internal tool
Software development has always been complex, but the rise of cloud computing and the proliferation of engineering tools have made things more complicated than ever — slowing down deployment rates in an era where time-to-market is of paramount importance.
By simplifying the development process, platform engineering addresses some of the most difficult challenges software engineers face. But what is platform engineering? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know.
What Is Platform Engineering?
Platform engineering is the practice of building and maintaining a comprehensive, proprietary software development tool — usually called an Internal Development Platform (IDP) — that provides a company’s engineering team with everything they need to deploy applications.
Platform engineering has risen to prominence because of the increasing complexity of the modern software development process, which over recent decades has grown to include a long list of different applications, tools, etc. While it certainly has its advantages, the downside of this ever-growing toolkit is a fractured development environment that can be hard for engineers to navigate efficiently. Platform engineering is a direct response to this trend. Platform engineers streamline the development environment by building an IDP that makes it much easier to utilize the right resources.
What Is an Internal Developer Platform?
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) combines and organizes the company’s software development resources into a unified, self-service application. For platform engineers, the company’s development team is the client, and the IDP is the internal product they design, build, and optimize to support that client. IDPs are typically a synthesis of APIs, services, tools, knowledge, and anything else that could help the development team bring new products and features to market. A successful IDP provides what is known as a “golden path”: It makes the software development journey as smooth and straightforward as possible.
Platform Engineering vs. DevOps
Although some may suggest platform engineering is the next phase of DevOps, it’s probably more accurate to understand platform engineering as an activity that supports the goals of DevOps.
- DevOps is an approach to software development that aims to improve a company’s ability to rapidly deploy new applications through the implementation of a comprehensive set of philosophies, practices, and tools.
- Platform engineering supports that approach by building tools — the IDP — that accelerates the software development process.
What Are the Benefits of Platform Engineering?
Companies that use platform engineering have several advantages over those that use more traditional software development tech stacks. These advantages include faster software development, enhanced security, and lower operational complexity.
- Faster software development: Traditional software development tech stacks are a fractured collection of specialized tools and resources that often require a high degree of expertise and manual labor. By uniting these tools and resources in a single platform — and automating formerly manual processes — IDPs accelerate software development by making it easy for anyone on the development team to get to work.
- Enhanced security: Traditional software development tech stacks can lack the proper security controls when provisioning infrastructure, requiring extensive manual security work to shore up vulnerabilities. Some IDPs, however, can incorporate the proper security controls out of the box so developers can be confident that every infrastructure component they provision meets rigorous security standards.
- Lower operational complexity: Traditional software development tech stacks can become unruly and overly complex, especially for large companies or companies that develop innovative technology. Platform engineering simplifies the development environment by organizing and consolating resources into the IDP.
Fight back against burnout. Nearly 50% of senior engineers say burnout is their team’s number one issue, but Internal Developer Platform adoption is a light at the end of the tunnel. Read more in our free report:
While these benefits have prompted large companies like Capital One, Intel, Cisco, and General Motors to aggressively hire platform engineers, mid-sized businesses are also embracing platform engineering. This is partly because platform engineering can help them get an edge in the market by minimizing deployment times and avoiding compliance dependencies.
What Are the Best Platform Engineering Tools?
DuploCloud
Capable of functioning as an out-of-the-box IDP, DuploCloud enables development teams to significantly increase cloud application deployment rates through DevOps automation and orchestration.
- Key features: DuploCloud’s no-code/low-code IDP accelerates cloud application development by transforming high-level descriptions into detailed and fully managed cloud configurations. The engineering platform’s rules-based engine has built-in knowledge of over 500 cloud services and automatically generates the necessary Infrastructure-as-Code for modern cloud applications. Additionally, the platform integrates directly with your existing DevOps toolchains, popular cloud services, and open-source tools. These integrations include Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, ClamAV, Wazuh, and more. Finally, everything provisioned by DuploCloud meets the highest security, availability, and compliance standards.
- Best for: As a cloud platform engineering tool, DuploCloud can help organizations of all sizes increase time to market and lower development costs, but it’s particularly well suited to help startups and other resource-constrained companies address some of their biggest development roadblocks — like stringent software compliance requirements.
MongoDB Atlas
Used by companies like Sega, Boxed, and Liberty Mutual, MongoDB Atlas is a suite of cloud database and data services designed to streamline how engineering teams handle database deployment and utilization during the development process.
- Key features: MongoDB Atlas has numerous features that support simplified database deployment, such as in-app analytics, relevance-based search data, and power transactional processing. These robust and innovative features are delivered via a user-friendly, developer-optimized platform that allows teams to tackle data according to their internal processes and preferences.
- Best for: MongoDB Atlas is ideal for larger businesses with extensive database management issues. Mid-sized companies will probably be better served by a complete IDP solution.
Kratix
Accessible via GitHub, Kratix is an open-source framework that helps platform engineers create IDPs for development teams.
- Key features: Kratix allows platform engineers to build IDPs that cater to every developer via multiple levels of abstraction and Kubernetes access controls. The framework also enables self-service API access, efficiently defines business logic for IDP stakeholders, and supports multi-cluster deployment via any infrastructure.
- Best for: Intended for organizations with large platform engineering teams, Kratix is a good tool for enterprise tech companies looking to empower dedicated platform engineers.
The Power of an Out-of-the-Box IDP Solution
For some organizations — especially large enterprises — platform engineering is an activity that will involve staffing, internal development, and ongoing support. But for other organizations, particularly mid-sized companies, platform engineering will primarily involve investing in an out-of-the-box IDP solution that provides the advantages of a home-grown platform without the necessary allocation of internal resources.
Supplying the self-service and automation features modern engineering teams need, DuploCloud is an ideal out-of-the-box IDP for businesses of all sizes. Read our white paper to learn how to accelerate deployment rates with DuploCloud.
