It focuses on creating and managing internal self-service platforms that allow developers to concentrate on building applications rather than worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
Keeping up with its development and the trends in this discipline is vital to understanding its impact on industry needs and technological innovations.
In this article, we will explore the 10 most relevant trends in Platform Engineering:
Trend 1. Integration of DevOps and GitOps
One of the most significant trends in platform engineering is the integration of DevOps practices with GitOps.
DevOps is a methodology that integrates software development and operations processes to accelerate product delivery, improve quality, and increase collaboration between teams.
DevOps has revolutionized the way organizations develop and deploy software, promoting collaboration between development and operations teams to accelerate release cycles and improve software quality.
GitOps takes this idea a step further by using Git repositories as the single source of truth for infrastructure and declarative applications. Git repositories are digital containers where a project’s source code is stored, allowing for its management through the Git version control system. This system facilitates tracking every change made to project files and enables multiple people to work simultaneously on different versions without conflicts.
Thus, GitOps is a model for managing infrastructure and applications that allows for greater automation, traceability, and collaboration. It simplifies CI/CD pipelines and ensures that all changes are auditable and reversible.
CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipelines are a series of automated steps used to extract the source code, test it, and deploy it in production environments. These processes are essential in implementing DevOps practices and facilitate fast and reliable software development.
What is GitOps? | GitOps vs DevOps
Trend 2. Container Orchestration with Kubernetes
Kubernetes continues to dominate as the preferred platform for container orchestration. Its ability to manage and scale microservices-based applications has led to near-ubiquitous adoption.
Current trends include the use of Kubernetes Operators to manage complex applications and the management of multiple clusters to enhance scalability and resilience.
Kubernetes Operators enable encapsulation of the operational logic of an application, automating its management and maintenance. This reduces the operational burden and improves consistency.
Kubernetes Explained in 6 Minutes | k8s Architecture –
Trend 3. Adoption of Service Mesh
The adoption of Service Mesh, such as Istio and Linkerd, is on the rise. These systems facilitate the management of communication between microservices, providing features such as traffic management, security, and observability.
A Service Mesh allows development teams to focus on the business logic of their applications, delegating the complexity of communication and security to the underlying infrastructure. This is particularly valuable in microservices architectures, where communication between services can become complex and difficult to manage.
Trend 4. Platform as a Product
More and more organizations are adopting the philosophy of treating their internal development platforms as products. This involves having dedicated platform teams focused on user experience, feedback loops, and continuous improvement.
This approach ensures that internal platforms meet the current needs of development teams and evolve with them. By considering the platform as a product, organizations can prioritize features and improvements that truly add value to their internal users, enhancing developer efficiency and satisfaction.
What is Platform as a Product?
Trend 5. Serverless Architectures
Serverless computing is gaining popularity, allowing developers to focus on writing code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Platforms like Functions as a Service (FaaS) and event-driven architectures are at the forefront of this trend.
Serverless reduces the need to manage servers and enables automatic scaling based on demand, which can result in cost reduction and greater agility. This trend is driven by the need to develop applications more quickly and respond more effectively to changes in workload.
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Trend 6. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
The use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation is on the rise. These tools enable the automation of infrastructure resource provisioning, improving consistency and reducing human errors.
IaC is fundamental for managing complex infrastructures, allowing organizations to version, audit, and revert changes to the infrastructure as easily as application code. This ability to handle infrastructure programmatically is essential for maintaining agility and resilience in dynamic environments.
Trend 7. Enhanced Security
Security is a growing concern in platform engineering. Best security practices are being integrated throughout the platform lifecycle, including DevSecOps, automated security testing, and zero-trust architectures.
DevSecOps integrates security from the early stages of development, ensuring that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed early. Zero-trust architectures adopt a continuous verification approach, where no entity, whether inside or outside the network, is trusted by default.
Trend 8. Observability and Monitoring
Advanced observability tools are essential for managing complex platforms. This includes the integration of logs, metrics, and traces to provide a comprehensive view of system health and performance.
Modern observability platforms enable operations teams to identify and troubleshoot issues proactively, improving application availability and performance. The ability to monitor and understand how applications behave in real time is crucial for maintaining a high quality of service.
Splunk Observability in Less Than 2 Minutes
Trend 9. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Strategies
More and more organizations are adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies to avoid dependence on a single provider, improve resilience, and leverage the best services from different cloud providers.
Platform engineering plays a key role in managing these complex environments, ensuring that applications can be deployed and managed consistently across multiple environments. Tools and practices that facilitate portability and interoperability between clouds are essential for the success of these strategies.
Hybrid and multicloud architecture designs for an effective cloud strategy –
Trend 10. Developer Experience (DevEx)
Improving the developer experience is a growing priority. This includes simplifying workflows, reducing cognitive load, and providing better documentation and support.
Organizations are creating intuitive self-service portals and enhancing user interfaces so that developers can easily access the tools and resources they need. An optimized developer experience not only increases productivity but also improves developer satisfaction and retention.
The Secret Formula to Improve Developer Experience Revealed!
In summary, Platform engineering continues to evolve to meet the demands of an ever-changing software development environment. Current trends reflect a focus on automation, security, observability, and improving the developer experience.
By adopting these trends, organizations can build more efficient, secure, and scalable platforms that enable their development teams to deliver high-quality applications more quickly and reliably.
Ignoring these trends could not only limit innovation and growth but also lead to severe financial and operational losses. The lack of a robust and modern platform can result in security failures, operational inefficiencies, and poor developer experience—factors that can erode a company’s competitiveness and credibility in the market.
Platform engineering is not just an option; it is an essential and critical component for success and survival in modern software development, with a direct impact on business operations across all sectors.
