What Are the Benefits of Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering is one of the most recent trends in the field of DevOps and software engineering and is often referred to as the next evolution of DevOps.

If you own a business that works with toolchains and infrastructure, it can be difficult to keep up with the developing trends. As new trends evolve, it can be hard to know if something would be beneficial for your business.

This article will explain the benefits of platform engineering, along with giving you insight into some challenges of utilizing an internal developer platform.

What Is Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering is an approach to infrastructures that focuses on optimizing workflows and tooling to allow for self-service capabilities.

The main focus of platform engineering is creating reusable internal developer platforms that fit the needs of your developers to improve productivity.

The goal of platform engineering is to make your team less dependent on operations engineers, which can have some big benefits for your business.

But just like any other emerging trend, you should understand the benefits and the downsides of platform engineering before you decide to commit to integrating it into your systems.

See also: What Is Platform Engineering, And What Makes It Different?

What Are the Advantages of Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering offers a variety of benefits that may make it more appealing than or as an addition to traditional DevOps consulting services.

1. Empowers Non-Development Team

The biggest cost savings driving the appeal of platform engineering is the reduction in developer time to execute routine tasks your team needs to keep running smoothly.

Instead of having to send a request, wait for implementation, and pay for the developer’s cost to do that action, platform engineering allows your dev or even non-dev team to do routine tasks independently without needing to involve Ops.

2. Improved Mobility and Scalability

Implementing platform engineering can help centralize team communication, which can help people in different aspects of the development pipeline communicate better and solve problems faster.

Platform as a service is available at all times, meaning that multiple developers can work on one codebase at the same time.

Because of the use of cloud resources, platform engineering platforms have flexible and scalable spaces, tools, and resources.

Easy scalability allows your business to grow quickly or easily meet peak demands.

Because you only pay for the resources you use, if you only occasionally have greater server demands, you will save money by not continuously paying for that space.

Platform engineering is an easy way to grow your business without requiring a lot of financial investment from you.

3. Increased Speed and Productivity

Platform engineering focuses on centralizing communication between teams, making communication easier and allowing problems to be solved faster.

Working with platform engineering teams, they’ll focus on taking care of your infrastructure. This frees up your software engineers, who might need to work on infrastructure in other organizations, to focus only on product development.

Only having to focus on one aspect of development allows software engineers to be more productive and deliver products to clients faster.

Having standardized resources through platform engineering allows developers to develop and implement new applications and features without having to spend time creating a new work environment from scratch with every project.

4. Better Developer Experience

Taking advantage of platform engineering can help reduce the cognitive load of software engineers by decreasing what they’re expected to work on and minimizing their workload for individual projects by creating standardized resources.

5. Developer Self-Service

With platform engineering, standardized systems can be created that meet the needs of development teams and enable developer self service.

This can reduce friction during the development process by giving developers everything they need to build, test, and run their own software in a convenient, easy-to-access location.

What Are the Disadvantages of Platform Engineering?

With any process, there may be disadvantages depending on your needs and what the specific process entails. These are a few of the commonly listed concerns or disadvantages of platform engineering.

1. Increased Complexity

Beginning platform engineering can add complexity because you have to build and run the platforms involved.

However, working with an experienced platform engineering team like OpSourced can remove the complexity of platform engineering.

Our platform engineer team will work alongside your team and consider your workflows and needs to build out the platform without adding to your software engineer’s workload and stress.

2. Dependent on Providers

With platform engineering, you are somewhat dependent on the infrastructure and software of your vendor, meaning you may find yourself linked to a particular set of tools without the ability to change it.

This could also mean that if your provider stops supporting a specific toolset, you will have to change what you’re using or change your platform team.

3. Data Security

Security is a major concern whenever storing information in the cloud is involved. With any cloud provider, your data could be at risk.

Because of this, it’s important that you do research and choose platform engineers that you trust and include your own security measures.

At OpSourced, we make sure to include best practices and additional security measures in all infrastructures we work on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the pros and cons of platform engineering?

The pros of platform engineering include a more empowered non-development team, improved mobility and scalability, increased speed and productivity, and developer self-service. The cons of platform engineering are increased complexity in some cases, dependence on providers, and the possibility of data leaks if the cloud provider experiences a breach.

In Closing

Platform engineering is a new trend that can offer a lot of benefits for businesses by helping you improve your productivity and decreasing your developers' workloads.

Platform engineering consulting is a faster and easier way to implement platform engineering practices into your business.

A consultant not only has experience with platform engineering and working with various infrastructure types but also brings the added benefit of not adding to your engineers' workflow.

Bringing in a consultant allows you to keep your developers working on your projects while your platform infrastructures are being developed.

OpSourced offers consulting services for all aspects of development and operations. Contact us today to learn more about how we may be able to help you start your platform engineering journey.