Platform Engineering
Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era. Platform engineers provide an integrated product most often referred to as an “Internal Developer Platform” covering the operational necessities of the entire lifecycle of an application. An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) encompasses a variety of technologies and tools, integrated in a manner that reduces cognitive load on developers while retaining essential context and underlying technologies. It helps operations structure their setup and enable developer self-service. Platform engineering done right means providing golden paths and paved roads that match the preferred abstraction level of the individual developer, who interacts with the IDP.
What is an internal developer platform?
An internal developer platform is focused on a company’s internal development practices. You define a set of recommended and supported development paths to production and incrementally "pave" a way through them with an internal platform. To use a real-world analogy, new paths often start out as dirt trails, but as more people use them, they're paved to improve safety while maintaining velocity and throughput. Paved paths within an internal developer platform have similar goals. They're designed to guide developers through critical requirements and standards without sacrificing developer delivery velocity. This is achieved by providing dev teams with standardized, secure, and scalable self-service capabilities. At the same time, you still make it easy for operations and your IT organization to ensure that the underlying infrastructure and tools are efficient, compliant, and cost-effective. While some paths might be partially paved, a fully paved, golden path reduces cognitive load for everyone involved. Developers are the primary consumers or customer of an internal developer platform. Automation and centralization enable efficient operations while still ensuring stakeholder requirements like compliance are met.