Software development not only replaces DevOps but innovates and transforms it. As per studies, 78% of organisations use the Platform Engineering Tools and DevOps practices to report quickly and deliver software applications timely. In modern software development, platform engineering gain huge recognition, because it holds future of DevOps. It transforms the infrastructure delivery and establishes core principles that innovate devOps.

The candidates who want to learn about platform engineering feel confused between platform engineering, DevOps, and Site reliability engineering. To help you to know better, here we prepare a blog for you. Read the complete blog to know everything about Platform engineering, tools used in it, Platform engineering roadmap, skills required, how it shapes the future of DevOps, platform engineering vs DevOps Vs Site reliability engineering, etc.

What is Platform Engineering?

Platform Engineering has emerged as a crucial field in cutting-edge software development, enabling organizations to build scalable, reliable, and efficient infrastructure for developers. It focuses on designing, building, and handling internal platforms. It allows the software development teams to deliver the apps effectively and efficiently on time.

How does platform engineering work?

Platform engineering works by addressing common developer problems and streamlining software delivery to expedite the development processes. Self-service Platform engineering skills reduce complexity and allow developers to freely use the platform’s supplied support, workflows, services, and automation. As a result, developers can focus on the end made of the development system rather than its logistics and underlying infrastructure. 

While self-service skills enhance flexibility, platforms still help maintain compliance and synergy across development approaches. Platforms provide a “paved path” for development teams, reduce common boundaries and catering to desires to empower developers to efficiently navigate software delivery.

Skills Required For a Platform Engineer

If you need to become a successful Platform engineer, it's essential to have some key Platform engineering skills like communication skills, analytical skills, innovation skills, collaborative teamwork skills & problem-solving skills.

•                    Good coding skills

•                    Creativity and problem-solving skills

•                    Analytical skills

•                    Excellent Communication skills: Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills to it appears that evidently and articulate technical standards.

•                    Research and innovation skills

•                    Team collaboration

•                    Working under tight timelines and ability to perform well and deliver software

Role of Platform Engineering in DevOps

DevOps is a methodology that focuses on collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement in the software development lifecycle. Platform engineering performs a crucial role in DevOps by providing the equipment and services required to enforce DevOps practices effectively and rewarded with handsome Platform engineering salary packages. A strong platform allows groups to automate manual tasks, reduce pressure, and speed up the development and deployment system.

Benefits of Platform Engineering in DevOps

Here how platform engineering benefits in DevOps

•                    Streamline CI/CD Pipelines

 Platform engineering allows the creation of automatic CI/CD pipelines that permit for faster code integration and deployment.

•                    Consistency

It ensures consistent development, testing, and manufacturing environments and reduces issues related to surrounding mismatches.

•                    Real-Time Monitoring and Feedback

 Provides Platform engineering Tools for real-time tracking, logging, and automatic remarks, assisting teams find problems early and handles them hastily.

•                    Collaboration Across Teams

It supports cross-platform collaboration between development, safety, operations, and quality warranty groups.

Platform Engineer Roadmap

Here’s a best Platform engineering roadmap to guide you learn platform engineering step by step

Foundations (1-2 months)

•                    Learn Linux (system management, shell scripting).

•                    Get comfortable with control systems like Git.

•                    Learn cloud fundamentals (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

•                    Learn Python or practice scripting and automation.

DevOps and Automation Tools (2-4 months)

•                    Learn about CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI).

•                    Explore Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation).

•                    Learn about Docker and containerization.

Cloud Platforms (2-3 months)

•                    Pick the best cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP) and grasp its core services:

•                    Compute (EC2, GKE)

•                    Storage (S3, Cloud Storage)

•                    Networking (VPC, Load Balancers)

•                    Security (IAM, KMS)

Kubernetes and Orchestration (2-3 months)

•                    Learn Kubernetes fundamentals: pods, services, configuration maps, and secrets and techniques.

•                    Deploy packages with the use of Helm charts.

•                    Explore orchestration support and managed Kubernetes services.

Monitoring and Observability (1-2 months)

•                    Set up Prometheus for monitoring.

•                    Learn the way to create dashboards with Grafana.

•                    Explore log control with ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana).

Hands-On Projects

•                    Build a CI/CD pipeline from scratch.

•                    Create IaC scripts to deploy infrastructure on AWS/GCP.

•                    Deploy a Kubernetes cluster and installation tracking with Prometheus and Grafana.

Platform Engineering vs. DevOps vs. SRE

Platform engineering, DevOps, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) share common desires of enhancing software program delivery and operational performance but differ in focus and method. Let us understand below.

•                    DevOps focus on the cultural and system aspects of collaboration among development and operations groups. It focuses on continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), automation, and fosters a life of shared duty.

•                    SRE, originated by using Google, specializes in using software program engineering concepts to operational issues to obtain high availability and reliability. It involves growing scalable and enormously reliable software structures.

•                    Platform engineering consists elements from both DevOps and SRE however focuses on building and managing the platform that supports these practices. It targets the infrastructure, growing tools, and automating workflows to empower developers and operations groups.

Key differences among Platform Engineering and DevOps

Platform engineering tools

Platform engineering uses a number of tools that must be carefully picked. The desire matters since it defines what developers can do on their own, what's part of the provider, and to what amount the infrastructure management is automatic. Because of that, each internal developer platform is specific. However, there are a few common types of Platform engineering Tools that we need to share.

Major Challenges in Platform Engineering

While platform engineering offers various benefits, companies also face some demanding situations whilst adopting those practices. Overcoming these demanding situations is important to building and maintaining a Developer experience platform. Here are few challenges in Platform Engineering

•                    Complexity of Integration: Integrating new structures with current structures can be hard and time-consuming.

•                    Skill Gap: There is a need for specialized Platform engineering skills that can lead to difficulties in recruitment and training.

•                    Maintenance Overhead: Keeping the platform up-to-date and keeping its performance calls for ongoing attempts and assets.

•                    Cultural Shifts: Adopting platform engineering may need modifications in organizational culture, along with a shift to more collaboration-targeted and agile approaches of working.

Future Trends of Platform Engineering

As companies scale their operations and undertake more complex architectures like microservices, platform engineering has become a necessity for retaining DevOps practices powerful. The future of the Developer experience platform is based on platform engineering as it empowers agencies to keep agility while dealing with improved complexity.

•                    Shift-Left Testing: Early testing in the pipeline will be more integrated, reduce comments loops and improving software friendly.

•                    Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Support: Platforms will more and more guide hybrid and multi-cloud environments, giving businesses more flexibility.

•                    Increased Use of AI and Machine Learning: AI-powered support will help in automating decisions related to infrastructure management, performance tuning, and more.

•                    Unified Observability: Platforms will provide deeper observability into all components of the improvement pipeline, from code to infrastructure.

Conclusion

Platform engineering is an emerging new process in app development. As the adoption of CloudZero features continues to develop, finding approaches to control the development of cloud-based packages has become more important. Software is complicated, so prioritizing a strong basis for an application to be constructed upon will become more and more beneficial in the end.

Platform engineering creates an abstracted layer that IT groups can access with all the resources they need. This approach that they could focus on the delivery of their code, in preference to different duties surrounding an application's infrastructure. This accelerates productivity, performance, and delivery.