What is Platform Engineering?

Summary

“Platform engineering redefines DevOps with centralized, self-service solutions for developers so they can build, test, deploy and manage applications more efficiently.”

Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building self-service tools, services and infrastructure for developers, so they can build, test, deploy and manage applications more efficiently. 

Platform engineering emerged in response to development and cloud complexity. With the growing need for scalable, efficient and reliable infrastructure, DevOps and Agile methodologies emerged, offering a collaborative developer-ops culture built on automations.

However, there are still gaps related to complexity, silos, slow feedback loops and slow adoption.

Building on the principles of DevOps and Agile, platform engineering addresses these gaps, providing centralized and reusable tools and systems for developers.

The result is a developer-friendly ecosystem that abstracts away the complexity of underlying systems and reduces developer cognitive load.

The self-service capabilities are delivered to developers through an Internal Developer Platform. These platforms offer developers predefined workflows, i.e “golden paths”, for common tasks such as provisioning environments or deploying code.

This design is used to streamline and automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, and eliminate bottlenecks caused by dependency on operations teams.

For example, a centralized internal developer platform for developers might

• Provide pre-configured CI/CD pipelines.
• Offer templates for Kubernetes deployments.
• Enable self-service provisioning of cloud environments.
• Integrate monitoring and logging tools.

What is an Internal Developer Platform?

An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is a self-service platform designed to streamline and optimize the workflows of software development teams. It acts as a bridge between development and operations, providing developers with the tools, resources and environments they need to build, test, and deploy software quickly and efficiently, without having to depend on manual intervention from operations teams.

An IDP is a key component in platform engineering. It is the technological solution that supports the principles of platform engineering.

Key Features of an IDP:

• Self-Service Capabilities – Developers can provision resources (e.g., environments, databases, CI/CD pipelines) on-demand without waiting for support from DevOps or IT teams.
• Automation – Automates repetitive tasks like infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and deployment pipelines.
• Standardization – Provides pre-defined templates and configurations to ensure consistency across teams and projects.
• Abstraction of Complexity – Hides the underlying complexities of infrastructure, allowing developers to focus on coding and delivering features rather than managing infrastructure.
• Integration with Existing Tools – Connects seamlessly with CI/CD tools, monitoring systems, version control systems, and cloud services.
• Centralized Management – Offers a unified interface for managing development workflows, environments, and configurations.

How Does Platform Engineering Work?

Platform engineering teams operate in a “platform-as-a-product” approach. This means that  they treat the internal developer platform as a product, just like any other organizational customer-facing product.

This entails:

1. Platform engineers start by analyzing the challenges faced by developers, such as bottlenecks in deployments, lack of observability, or difficulty in managing environments.

2. Platform engineers develop tools, APIs, and workflows tailored to address these needs. For example, a platform may include:

• Kubernetes clusters for container orchestration.
• A service catalog for spinning up microservices.
• Integrated monitoring tools like Grafana or Prometheus.

It’s important to bake in security practices, such as automated vulnerability scans and compliance checks, into workflows.

3. Providing Abstractions – Instead of asking developers to write complex YAML files for Kubernetes, the platform might offer templates or UIs that abstract the underlying complexity.

4. The platform evolves based on developer feedback, new technologies, and changing organizational goals.

Challenges of Adopting Platform Engineering

The platform engineering definition means offering a structured approach to delivering reliable and scalable infrastructure to development teams. But it also comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s an overview of the key challenges:

1. Balancing Standardization and Flexibility – Platform engineering aims to create reusable systems, but over-standardizing can alienate developers by limiting their freedom to innovate.

2. Meeting Diverse Developer Needs – Developers often have unique requirements based on their projects or tech stacks. A “one-size-fits-all” platform may fail to address these diverse needs.

3. Managing Complexity – Platforms often integrate numerous tools, APIs, and services, leading to operational complexity.

4. Scaling Effectively – Platforms must scale with the organization while maintaining performance and reliability.

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration – Successful platform engineering requires buy-in and cooperation between development, operations and security teams, which is nit always easy to attain.

6. Keeping Up with Technological Change – Technology evolves rapidly, and platforms risk becoming obsolete if not continuously improved.

7. Ensuring Security – Golden-paths and templates must abide by security practices to prevent risks like vulnerabilities or misconfigurations.

Benefits of Platform Engineering

Despite the complexities, platform engineering improves efficiency, reliability, and scalability for development, security and operations teams. Here are the key benefits:

1. Developer Productivity – Standardized platforms reduce the friction and cognitive load in development workflows, allowing developers to focus on coding rather than configuring infrastructure.

2. Operational Efficiency – Tasks like infrastructure provisioning, testing and deployment are automated, reducing human error and saving time. In addition, platform engineers manage configurations and updates in one place, making operations more consistent across teams.

3. Improved Scalability and Reliability – With best practices and replicable infrastructure baked into the platform, applications are more consistent, leading to fewer failures and supporting accelerated scale.

4. Collaboration and Alignment – Teams are aligned under the same tools and processes, fostering a culture of shared accountability.

5. Enhanced Security – Developers can access pre-approved security tools and configurations earlier in the development lifecycle.

6. Faster Innovation – By abstracting complexity, developers have more mental bandwidth to innovate rather than manage infrastructure.

Platform Engineering as the New DevOps

DevOps brought together development and operations teams to streamline development through CI/CD pipelines and containerization, and to improve collaboration. But cloud computing, containerization, monitoring and many more requirements have made DevOps complicated to handle and scale.

Platform engineering focuses on creating centralized, self-service infrastructure and tools for developers to achieve better productivity and scalability. This is the evolution of DevOps, addressing challenges and limitations that have emerged as organizations scale their operations and software delivery processes in the cloud.

Here’s how platform engineering evolves DevOps practices:

Platform Engineering and Security

Security practices should be implemented in IdP golden-paths and templates. These include:

1. CI/CD Pipeline Security:
   • Integrate static and dynamic analysis tools for code scanning.
   • Ensure secrets management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault) and avoid hardcoding credentials.
   • Apply artifact signing and verification to secure supply chains.
2. Infrastructure Security:
   • Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with secure configurations
   • Implement network segmentation and zero-trust architecture.
3. Runtime Security:
   • Enforce container runtime policies (e.g., preventing privileged containers).
4. Identity and Access Management (IAM):
   • Provide least-privilege access to all platform resources.
   • Implement single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
5. Compliance Automation:
   • Automate audits and evidence collection to meet regulatory requirements (e.g., SOC 2, GDPR).
   • Embed compliance checks into CI/CD pipelines.

How Checkmarx Integrated in IDPs

Checkmarx is the leading AppSec platform that allows security teams to automatically identify and remediate code vulnerabilities and malware. By integrating security into the development pipeline, security and development teams can ensure robust protection from code to cloud.

These capabilities can be used in IDPs, securing applications from the first line of code to cloud deployment and accelerating vulnerability identification and remediation by 55%.

Learn more here.