Three Layers Every Platform Needs for Success: Apps, Orchestration, and Infra!

Seemingly, everyone is building an internal developer platform (IDP) or embracing platform engineering. However, the tooling and trends are still emerging. We don't yet understand how all of the technologies need to be combined for success. Join this talk for an opinionated overview of how to build a platform:

- Learn how to set goals, metrics, and KPIs when building a platform
- Understand the three layers that must be present in every platform: application choreography, platform orchestration, and infrastructure composition
- Explore the related people, organisation, and leadership skills that must accompany building a platform.

We'll draw on case studies from real-world platform building and summarise the current best practices.

Transcript

1. Three Layers Every Platform Needs for Success: Apps, Orchestration, and Infra! Daniel Bryant Product Marketing
2. • Leadership buy-in is a must ◦ Goals, intent, visibility • Three ways to build: ◦ Top-down, application developer-focused ◦ Bottom-up, operations/infrastructure-focused ◦ Middle-out, platform engineering-focused • APIs, automation, and abstractions are key ◦ Promises, promises… ◦ Build, buy, and blend tl;dr: Building a platform for success
3. linktr.ee/danielbryantuk @danielbryantuk (he/him)
4. The “what” of platforms 🏗
5. “Platform engineering improves developer experience and productivity by providing self-service capabilities with automated infrastructure operations. It is trending because of its promise to optimise the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.” https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering Gartner: What is platform engineering?
6. “Platform engineering improves developer experience and productivity by providing self-service capabilities with automated infrastructure operations . It is trending because of its promise to optimise the developer experience and accelerate product teams’ delivery of customer value.” https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/what-is-platform-engineering Gartner: What is platform engineering?
7. Platform engineering and the Gartner Hype Cycle • By 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams / Gartner Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends 2024 • 65% of orgs say “The platform team is important and is receiving continued investment” / Puppet State of DevOps 2024
8. Navigating over the peak and through the trough linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7199307746356199424
9. Platform challenges
10. The “why” of platforms 🤔
11. Why build a platform? “The thing to keep in mind about Backstage is that its purpose is to improve developer onboarding time [...] it lets you more easily encode best practice and the best and fastest way to do things. Organisations adopt Kubernetes without understanding that if you're not building a custom PaaS for your organisation, you're wasting your time. Similarly, if you're just using Backstage for tech docs, just use Confluence or something . ” reddit.com/r/devops/comments/10guddj/backstageio_common_issues_and_pitfalls/#t1_j59lbs3-comment-rtjson-content
12. Why build a platform? “Operations were just drowning . We spent too much time on repetitive requests from developers that asked stuff in Slack or Jira Tickets. [...] We first trained people around Terraform and Helm but they just didn't want to deal with that and they ended up poking senior developers to fix things instead [...] This basically created a shadow operations problem on top.” reddit.com/r/devops/comments/stuep4/weve_spent_months_building_this_platform_devs/
13. Case studies: Removing roadblocks for developers • 50% can deploy less than once per week ◦ Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2023 • Platforms teams must find a balance ◦ Providing platform “proof of value” to dev teams, and ◦ Avoiding “build it and they will come” approaches • How can you address this? ◦ Talk to your customers: the developers ◦ Find a specific pain point and fix it ◦ Create an “enabling team” ◦ “20% of effort to serve 80% of needs” Cat Morris
14. • Go faster: Platform teams need to provide “everything as a service” to help rapidly and sustainably deliver value to end-users • Decrease risk: Teams need to automate manual processes in reusable components • Increase efficiency: You need to manage and scale your digital platform and resources as a fleet What are the goals of your platform?
15. The “how” of platforms 󰠼󰲪󰠹
16. syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure
17. syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platforms-and-infrastructure
18. Making it happen 💪
19. Tech "stacks" are emerging • The “BACK” stack : Backstage, Argo, Crossplane, Kyverno • CNOE Framework : Cloud Native Operation Excellence • Kubefirst • DIY: All the other CNCF tech ++ • … More opinionated Less opinionated Platform builders need to elevate above Infra as Code
20. Business requirements change, user expectations expand, APIs are at the core of sustainable platforms • Open Application Model (OAM) / Score • Kratix and Promises • KubeBuilder • Crossplane • Massdriver • … More user focused More implementation focused Platform extensibility and usability demands APIs
21. The tech can be overwhelming
22. Platforms: Abstract thinking • APIs, domains, SOLID/CUPID ◦ Just as important for platforms ◦ Think information hiding ◦ Build for progressive disclosure • Design for UI, CLI, & API ◦ Meet devs where they are at ◦ Optimise for automation syntasso.io/post/when-backstage-met-terraform-a nd-platform-orchestrators-webinar-recap
23. Example: Kratix
24. Promises, promises…
25. Aspects (AOP anyone?)
26. Build it, and they will come Build it, and they will come Solve problems, and they will come ⚾
27. thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products Don't forget product focus
28. thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products Don't forget product focus
29. thoughtworks.com/en-gb/insights/looking-glass/platforms-as-products syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-for-execs-team-topologies-tools-and-trade-offs-webinar-recap Don't forget product focus
30. What gets measured, gets managed • Establish goals and measurements • Leading indicators ◦ Adoption rates ◦ Onboarding times ◦ Time to nth PR • Lagging indicators ◦ App retention rate ◦ Incidents/near misses mitigated ◦ ROI (time saved) linkedin.com/posts/billblosen_thanks-to-co-author-annie-hodgkins-garcia-activity-7198399542365466624-7VHd
31. Wrapping up 🎉
32. • 🏗 Build your platform intentionally ◦ APIs, abstrations, and automation are key ◦ Middle-out, platform engineering-focused ◦ Build, buy, and blend appropriately • 🎯 Focus on “platform as a product” ◦ Customer focus • 👀 Set goals, measure, and retrospect ◦ Balance leading and lagging indicators ◦ Communicate appropriately Conclusion
33. syntasso.io/post/platform-engineering-orchestrating-applications-platfo rms-and-infrastructure docs.kratix.io/main/quick-start speakerdeck.com/syntasso Thank you!