Build a Cloud Platform Foundation
A look at cloud platform foundations and landing zones
Music: Spandau Ballet - Foundation (1983)
Getting Informed
This post will cover topics that matter to developers and organizations that seek to attract developers. Those topics will range from legacy terminology such as DevOps, newer terminology like “platform engineering” or developer experience (DevX/DevEx), and the importance of a cloud platform foundation that provides landing zones that are aligned the goals of a developer community.
To be clear, legacy would be defined as a working solution or approach. So, new would be defined as a to-be-determined working solution or approach.
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Dramatic Reenactment of updates to a developer-friendly service catalog
It’s better now we’re comin’ through 🎶
First, you may recall developer experience, or DexEx/DevX, from past posts back in December 2021 and March 2022. In short, developer experience is the empathy that an organization expresses for their developers to enable and empower them.
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While you’ve probably heard of DevOps, the term “platform engineering” might not be as familiar. For context, one definition of “platform engineering” comes from a relatively new1 website of the same name:
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.2
Some would argue that, culturally, DevOps has less appeal in a truly developer experience focused organization. As such, the developer experience focus means shared goals that obviate operational responsibilities.3
Others, like Gartner, might argue that hype cycles play out over time and “Platform Engineering” will plateau in 2-5 years.4 That said, it is important to consider that emerging technologies might represent a catalyst to the embrace and adoption or convergence of other emerging technologies.
Plans were laid, no compromise was made 🎶
At this point, you might be saying
“Oh, I’ve heard this before… it’s about a single pane of glass, right?”
Indeed, others have strong opinions on pane of glass approaches.5
I’d only remind you that pane is a homonym with pain. 🤓
To summarize, there are four (4) key questions to answer in digital organizations:
- Do you enable a culture that attract developers?
- Do you have a clear platform engineering strategy?
- Do you promote using a DevX/DevEx minded cloud platform foundation?
- Do you further enrich the foundation with developer goal landing zones?
Until next time… Place your bets!
1Read: https://web.archive.org/web/20220117154511/https://platformengineering.org/
2Read: What is platform engineering?
3Read: DevOps Is Dead. Embrace Platform Engineering
4Read: Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Tech, 2022
5Read: Why putting a pane of glass on a pile of sh*t doesn’t solve your problem
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