A global survey of 500 application development and deployment professionals finds that while 43% work for organizations that have had a platform team in place for three to five years, there doesn’t appear to be much consistency regarding where that team reports within an organization.
The survey, conducted by Puppet by Perforce, a provider of an automation framework, found that among organizations that have platform teams, well over half (58%) operate within the context of a larger DevOps or infrastructure management organization, compared to 40% that have their own dedicated leadership.
David Sandilands, a principal solutions architect for Puppet by Perforce, said the survey makes it clear that platform engineering, in general, is not a new concept, but it’s clear more organizations are trying to reduce the level of toil currently associated with building and deploying applications.
Regardless of where platform teams reside in an organization, nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) said they are important to their organizations and would receive continued funding. The primary purpose for forming these teams is to increase productivity (58%) and automate standardized processes (51%), the survey finds. Top goals for platform engineering teams are to solve problems (30%), enforce security processes (27%) and accelerate transitions to cloud-native computing environments (26%). A full 70% said security was built into their platforms from the start.
That suggests that, in addition to assuming responsibility for traditional DevOps workflows, many platform teams are now also being asked to ensure DevSecOps best practices are followed at a time when application security requirements are becoming more stringent, noted Sandilands.
More than three quarters (76%) also reported that they had deployed two or more self-service portals, with 27% having deployed five or more.
Only 22%, however, said they have deployed applications on Kubernetes in a production environment, with just under half (46%) reporting they have no current plans to deploy a cloud-native computing platform, which are widely seen to be challenging to deploy and maintain.
Overall, the survey makes it clear the primary focus is to ensure platforms continue to evolve as developer requirements continue to evolve, said Sandilands. Platform teams are not necessarily trying to dictate what tools should be used; instead, they are finding ways to automate processes that are increasing the level of friction developers encounter, he added.
In the longer term, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will make it simpler to achieve that goal using natural language interfaces that DevOps teams can more easily invoke, noted Sandilands.
Each organization will need to decide for itself whether platform engineering makes sense as a methodology for managing DevOps at scale, but as application development and deployment continues to evolve, more nuanced approaches will be required. In general, organizations are trying to strike a balance between empowering developers and the need to streamline backend processes to increase productivity while also simplifying compliance and improving security.
The challenge, of course, is enticing developers to buy into that concept rather than using their expertise to resist platform teams that might, from their perspective, limit their prerogatives in ways that ultimately stifle innovation.
