Three Layers Every Platform Needs for Success: Apps, Orchestration, and Infra! Daniel Bryant Product Marketing

● Leadership buy-in is a must ○ Goals, intent, visibility ● Three ways to build: ○ Top-down, application developer-focused ○ Bottom-up, operations/infrastructure-focused ○ Middle-out, platform engineering-focused ● APIs, automation, and abstractions are key ○ Promises, promises… ○ Build, buy, and blend tl;dr: Building a platform for success

linktr.ee/danielbryantuk @danielbryantuk (he/him)

The “what” of platforms 🏗

“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 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 Gartner: What is platform engineering?

Platform engineering and the Gartner Hype Cycle ● By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams / Gartner Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends 2024 ● 65% of orgs say “The platform team is important and is receiving continued investment” / Puppet State of DevOps 2024

Navigating over the peak and through the trough linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7199307746356199424

Platform challenges

The “why” of platforms 🤔

Why build a platform? “The thing to keep in mind about Backstage is that its purpose is to improve developer onboarding time [...] it lets you more easily encode best practice and the best and fastest way to do things. Organisations adopt Kubernetes without understanding that if you're not building a custom PaaS for your organisation, you're wasting your time. Similarly, if you're just using Backstage for tech docs, just use Confluence or something . ” reddit.com/r/devops/comments/10guddj/backstageio_common_issues_and_pitfalls/#t1_j59lbs3-comment-rtjson-content

Why build a platform? “Operations were just drowning . We spent too much time on repetitive requests from developers that asked stuff in Slack or Jira Tickets. [...] We first trained people around Terraform and Helm but they just didn't want to deal with that and they ended up poking senior developers to fix things instead [...] This basically created a shadow operations problem on top.” reddit.com/r/devops/comments/stuep4/weve_spent_months_building_this_platform_devs/

Case studies: Removing roadblocks for developers ● 50% can deploy less than once per week ○ Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2023 ● Platforms teams must find a balance ○ Providing platform “proof of value” to dev teams, and ○ Avoiding “build it and they will come” approaches ● How can you address this? ○ Talk to your customers: the developers ○ Find a specific pain point and fix it ○ Create an “enabling team” ○ “20% of effort to serve 80% of needs” Cat Morris

● 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 What are the goals of your platform?

The “how” of platforms 󰠼󰲪󰠹

syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure

syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure

Making it happen 💪

Tech "stacks" are emerging ● The “BACK” stack : Backstage, Argo, Crossplane, Kyverno ● CNOE Framework : Cloud Native Operation Excellence ● Kubefirst ● DIY: All the other CNCF tech ++ ● … More opinionated Less opinionated Platform builders need to elevate above Infra as Code

Business requirements change, user expectations expand, APIs are at the core of sustainable platforms ● Open Application Model (OAM) / Score ● Kratix and Promises ● KubeBuilder ● Crossplane ● Massdriver ● … More user focused More implementation focused Platform extensibility and usability demands APIs

The tech can be overwhelming

Platforms: Abstract thinking ● APIs, domains, SOLID/CUPID ○ Just as important for platforms ○ Think information hiding ○ Build for progressive disclosure ● Design for UI, CLI, & API ○ Meet devs where they are at ○ Optimise for automation syntasso.io/post/when-backstage-met-terraform-a nd-platform-orchestrators-webinar-recap

Example: Kratix

Promises, promises…

Aspects (AOP anyone?)

Build it, and they will come Build it, and they will come Solve problems, and they will come ⚾

thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products Don't forget product focus

thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products Don't forget product focus

thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-for-execs-team-topologies-tools-and-trade-offs-webinar-recap Don't forget product focus

What gets measured, gets managed ● Establish goals and measurements ● Leading indicators ○ Adoption rates ○ Onboarding times ○ Time to nth PR ● Lagging indicators ○ App retention rate ○ Incidents/near misses mitigated ○ ROI (time saved) linkedin.com/posts/billblosen_thanks-to-co-author-annie-hodgkins-garcia-activity-7198399542365466624-7VHd

Wrapping up 🎉

● 🏗 Build your platform intentionally ○ APIs, abstrations, and automation are key ○ Middle-out, platform engineering-focused ○ Build, buy, and blend appropriately ● 🎯 Focus on “platform as a product” ○ Customer focus ● 👀 Set goals, measure, and retrospect ○ Balance leading and lagging indicators ○ Communicate appropriately Conclusion

syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platfo rms-and-infrastructure docs.kratix.io/main/quick-start speakerdeck.com/syntasso Thank you!