Platform Engineering for Cloud Teams

Platform engineering has emerged as a key practice for cloud teams, providing self-service capabilities, automation, and governance to streamline software delivery. This practice has evolved out of scaling out DevOps at a large scale. In this blog, we will explore the role of platform engineering, its benefits, and how Cloud teams can successfully implement it.

What Is Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering is the practice of designing and building internal developer platforms (IDPs) that enable software teams to develop, deploy, and manage applications efficiently. These platforms integrate tools, infrastructure, and workflows to reduce cognitive load on developers, allowing them to focus on writing code rather than managing complex cloud environments and learning the processes to manage them. 

Working with development engineering, DevOps, and SRE teams, platform engineers build self-service abstraction layers on top, at times even obfuscating the cloud vendor underneath, so that large development teams get a uniform and simple experience to deploy and manage cloud apps. 

Platform Engineering for Cloud Teams

A well-architected platform engineering approach consists of several key components:

• Infrastructure and compute – Manages cloud and compute resources needed for workloads
• Platform orchestration layer – Manages automated provisioning and platform-level abstractions
• CI/CD and deployment layer – Enables continuous integration, testing, and deployment
• Observability and security layer – Ensures visibility, security, and governance
• Compliance layer – Baked in Industry compliance control reporting
• Developer experience and self-service layer – Empowers developers with self-service tools and a streamlined workflow
• Cost and FinOps management layer (optimization) – Optimizes cloud usage, tracks cost, and ensures efficiency
• As code assets layer – Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Policy as Code (PaC), Configuration as Code (CaC), and Deployment Architecture as Code (DAaC)

Challenges in Setting Up Platform Engineering for Cloud Teams

While platform engineering brings significant advantages, cloud teams may face several challenges when implementing it:

• High initial investment – Building an IDP requires significant time, resources, and expertise, which can be a barrier for some organizations.
• Specialized skills – Platform Engineers building IDPs need to be experts in various aspects, including development, DevOps, SRE, compliance, and security.
• Tooling complexity – Selecting and integrating the right set of tools for infrastructure, CI/CD, observability, and security can be overwhelming and requires careful planning.
• Cultural resistance – Developers and operations teams may resist change, particularly if they are accustomed to traditional workflows. Effective communication and training are essential.
• Balancing standardization with flexibility – While standardization is crucial, overly rigid platforms may limit innovation. Striking the right balance between governance and developer autonomy is key.
• Security and compliance challenges – Ensuring security best practices and compliance requirements are consistently met across all teams and environments can be complex.
• Continuous maintenance and upgrades – Platforms need ongoing maintenance, updates, and improvements, which require dedicated teams and long-term commitment.

Benefits of Platform Engineering for Cloud Teams

• Enhanced developer experience – By abstracting away cloud complexity, developers can focus on coding instead of dealing with infrastructure management.
• Increased operational efficiency – Automation reduces manual tasks, leading to faster deployments and fewer operational bottlenecks.
• Improved security and compliance – Predefined security configurations and automated policy enforcement enhance governance and industry compliance across cloud environments.
• Scalability and reliability – Standardized processes ensure applications are built with scalability and reliability in mind.
• Cost optimization – Efficient resource allocation and auto-scaling mechanisms help reduce cloud costs.

Implementing Platform Engineering in Cloud Teams

Here are the high-level steps involved in implementing platform engineering in cloud teams. 

• Step 1: Assess current cloud challenges – Identify pain points such as inconsistent deployments, lack of observability, or security gaps, and multi-cloud environments.
• Step 2: Define a platform strategy – Outline key objectives, choose appropriate tools, and design an architecture that aligns with business goals.
• Step 3: Build the internal developer platform – Develop self-service workflows, integrate CI/CD pipelines, and establish governance frameworks.
• Step 4: Foster a DevOps culture – Encourage collaboration between developers, operations, and security teams to drive platform adoption.
• Step 5: Continuously iterate and improve – Monitor platform usage, collect feedback, and refine processes to ensure ongoing efficiency.

Roles and Responsibilities

Each component layer involves specific roles and responsibilities. Here’s how the roles align with each layer:

Workflow of IDP

The picture below depicts the workflow of the IDP for cloud teams.

Conclusion

Platform engineering is transforming the way cloud teams build and operate applications at scale by enabling automation, self-service, and standardization. By adopting a platform mindset, organizations can accelerate innovation, enhance security, and improve developer productivity. As cloud complexity continues to grow, investing in platform engineering will be crucial for organizations aiming to stay ahead.