[PlatformCon 24] Platform Orchestrators: The Missing Middle of Internal Developer Platforms?

At PlatformCon 2022, I argued that developers building applications on Kubernetes today are being asked not just to code. They are also responsible for shipping and running their applications. We often talk about needing a Kubernetes “platform” to handle these responsibilities, but do we really need to build our own PaaS?

- Many organisations start their platform build with a developer portal, which provides success on day 1 but struggles with day 2 challenges
- There appears to be a “missing middle” that manages the platform lifecycle in many implementations, which a “platform orchestrator” can address
- Most organisations are not as unique as they think they are, but they do need a way of codifying their business processes into the platform

Transcript

1. @danielbryantuk Platform Orchestrators: The Missing Middle of Internal Developer Platforms? Daniel Bryant | Independent Technical Consultant @danielbryantuk
2. @danielbryantuk How do you build a platform? • Top-down, application developer-focused ◦ “The Backstage service catalog is fantastic, but the support for day 2 ops… not so much” • Bottom-up, operations/infrastructure-focused ◦ “The Terraform workflow is fantastic, but infrastructure abstractions leak through to developers (HCL, K8s, etc)” • Middle-out, platform engineering-focused ◦ X-as-a-service, process automation, fleet management
3. @danielbryantuk @danielbryantuk (he/him) linktr.ee/danielbryantuk
4. @danielbryantuk Previously at
5. @danielbryantuk From Kubernetes to PaaS to… err, what’s next? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpYEhaUJnM
6. @danielbryantuk
7. @danielbryantuk The Gartner Hype Cycle: Platform Engineering Edition
8. @danielbryantuk Platform engineering expectations gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-11-28-gartner-hype-cycle-shows-ai-practices-and-platform-engineering-will-reach-mainstream-adoption-in-software-engineering-in-two-to-five-years
9. @danielbryantuk Gartner: What is platform engineering? “Platform engineering improves developer experience and productivity by providing self-service capabilities with automated infrastructure operations. It is trending because of its promise to optimise the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.” https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering
10. @danielbryantuk Gartner: What is platform engineering? “Platform engineering improves developer experience and productivity by providing self-service capabilities with automated infrastructure operations. It is trending because of its promise to optimise the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.” https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering
11. @danielbryantuk The “why” of platforms 🚉
12. @danielbryantuk What are the goals of your platform? • Go faster: Platform teams need to provide “everything as a service” to help rapidly and sustainably deliver value to end-users • Decrease risk: Teams need to automate manual processes in reusable components • Increase efficiency: You need to manage and scale your digital platform and resources as a fleet
13. @danielbryantuk Top down, app developer-focused rollout “Backstage is my platform. Developers go here to spin up a new application, deploy it, and view metrics” ✅ Fantastic developer experience (and service catalog) ✅ Highly customisable ❌ Often a facade that calls a series of infrastructure APIs ❌ Day 2 aspects of the portal and plugins can be challenging
14. @danielbryantuk “Terraform is my platform. I can orchestrate all of my infrastructure via HCL and cron jobs, and the GitOps pipelines automatically deploy applications” ✅ Everything-as-code ✅ Highly automatable ❌ Infrastructure abstractions leak outwards towards developers ❌ At scale, the diversity of tech can become challenging to orchestrate Bottom up, operations-focused rollout
15. @danielbryantuk The missing middle? 🏗
16. @danielbryantuk https://thenewstack.io/crossplane-what-most-people-get-wrong-and-how-to-get-it-right/ https://cnoe.io/ https://platformengineering.org/platform-tooling https://www.kratix.io/
17. @danielbryantuk syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure
18. @danielbryantuk syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure
19. @danielbryantuk Gartner: What is platform engineering? “Platform engineering improves developer experience and productivity by providing self-service capabilities with automated infrastructure operations. It is trending because of its promise to optimise the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.” https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering
20. @danielbryantuk Platform orchestration
21. @danielbryantuk Emerging platform technologies • Commercial: Humanitec, Massdriver, Qovery, Port, etc • Backstage, Argo, Crossplane, Kyverno (the “BACK” stack) • Cloud Native Operation Excellence (CNOE) • KubeVela and Open Application Model (OAM) • Kratix (and Promises) • DIY: All the other CNCF tech++ • … • … More opinionated Less opinionated 👧🐻🐻 🐻
22. @danielbryantuk Wrapping up 🎉
23. @danielbryantuk Conclusion • 🏗 Build your platform intentionally • 🚉 Watch out for the missing middle: “platform orchestrators” • 👀 Struggling with scaling day 2 operations with your portal? • 👀 Infrastructure abstractions leaking to developers? • 🎯 Focus on “platform as a product”
24. @danielbryantuk Thank you! @danielbryantuk syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure speakerdeck.com/danielbryantuk slideshare.net/dbryant_uk/presentations
25. @danielbryantuk