I’m super excited to send out the first issue of Platform Weekly written by a guest author. Interested in contributing? Submit your idea here.

Let’s get bakin’ 🥐

Is platform engineering key to the DevOps dream?

“Is platform engineering the answer to saving the DevOps dream?” A few weeks ago, I joined a panel with Spectro Cloud’s CTAO Saad Malik, Upbound’s Developer Advocate Viktor Farcic, and Isovalent’s Liz Rice to answer this question.

First, we have to agree on a common definition for DevOps. As Upbound’s Developer Advocate Viktor Farcic explained, the original intent of implementing DevOps was to make “teams self-sufficient, so they have full control of their application, right from the idea until it is running in production.”

While this definition encapsulates the dream of DevOps, it seems quite different from the “you build it, you run it” reality. This thread by Tom McLaughlin hits the nail on the head.

For organizations struggling with their DevOps implementations, platform engineering’s product approach offers a glimmer of hope. Saad Malik explained how platform engineering enables both consistency and innovation: “An organization will decide where they want to be able to provide that abstraction… [but] there are going to be unique use cases” where it might be okay for development teams to deviate from the golden path. Good platforms are designed to strike the right balance between developer self-service and freedom, whatever that looks like for the specific organization.

It’s an important step forward for the community, but I think there’s still more to come. Platform engineering is in the budding stage of its evolution, and as the community comes together more (especially at events like PlatformCon), I think the discipline will continue to evolve.

Want to watch the full panel discussion? You can find it here.

Short on time? ⏳ We got you 🥐😋

🥐 Matt Campbell synthesized community discussions about platform engineering, DevOps, and cognitive load into this short read.

🥐 Get some coffee ☕ and tune in to this video by Dave Farley. He shares some essential tips for building successful platform teams.

🥐 "Parallel to this renewed focus on the base layer (spoiler alert, the cloud is not above us, it’s below us in the data center and at the inner core we find storage, networking and infrastructure services) are efforts to provide self-service technologies i.e. those functions and services that engineers need, but now delivered -as-a-Service in and of themselves inside cloud layers." Platform engineering makes an appearance in Adrian Bridgwater's article for Forbes.

🥐 Check out the cool vendors in Platform Engineering here👇

🥐 Finding and stating with a clear identity is a challenge for many new platform organizations. This article by Michael Galloway gives some practical advice helping to define the one.

🥐 Have you joined the Platform Engineering Slack channel? If not, you're missing out. Here are this week's highlights:

• Top 3 obstacles to Backstage adoption
• Try to design an DSL for automation purposes
• Using terraform to import feature in AWS

This newsletter is a community effort, so if you have anything awesome to share from the cloud-native world, send it our way. You can share your ideas here.

Cya next week!

Stay crunchy 🥐

Luca