The strategic importance of platform engineering in modern software development

So, let’s start with the basics: what is platform engineering and what led to its development? Platform engineering was developed in response to the increasing complexity of software development and the need for streamlined, efficient processes. In the early days of DevOps, a strict division existed between the developer (the person who created the software) and operations (the person who deployed and managed the software on a daily basis). Maintaining systems and infrastructure fell into a grey area for the developer— often the developer role had to sort out their own infrastructure and systems, which led to a serious lack of efficiency when it came to the DevOps cycle.

To help with this, platform engineering was introduced to help build robust infrastructure and automate repetitive tasks to reduce the manual overhead for development teams. These efforts were aimed at enhancing operational efficiency, ensuring that the whole team could focus more on delivering the solution and less on managing infrastructure.

As the industry evolved, so did the scope of platform engineering. It began to encompass a broader range of responsibilities, including creating internal developer platforms (IDPs), enhancing the developer experience (DevEx) and ensuring the security and compliance of applications. The rise of DevOps practices further catalyzed this evolution, pushing platform engineering towards a more holistic approach that effectively integrates development and operations.

Recently, the industry has shown a rise in the creation of tooling to help make the developer’s life much easier (e.g., Podman Desktop). This tooling allows developers to develop concepts and end product for container and Kubernetes- and Red Hat OpenShift-based solutions locally, and the platform engineer can ensure the developer can do what they do best—generate end product code and applications without being burdened by external processes that add nothing to the deliverables (i.e., development environments, testing environments and standardised, organisation-contextual tooling).

Current trends in platform engineering

Today, platform engineering is defined by several key trends that reflect the changing needs of the software industry:

• The rise of internal developer platforms
• The role of Kubernetes and containerization
• Focus on developer experience

These trends are driven by the need for agility, scalability, efficiency and security, particularly in a cloud-native and multicloud world with a growing amount of technology choices.

The rise of internal developer platforms

One of the most significant trends in platform engineering is the adoption of internal developer platforms (IDPs). IDPs have become crucial in enabling development teams to operate with greater autonomy, providing them with self-service capabilities that reduce their reliance on operations teams. These platforms offer standardized, curated and security-hardened environments and tools, which help to streamline workflows and accelerate development cycles.

For example, Backstage.io, a popular open source developer portal, is being widely adopted as a front end for IDPs to provide teams with a unified interface for managing services, dependencies and documentation. It offers a single source of truth to improve efficiency and lower cognitive load due the sheer amount of options available today. It integrates effectively with Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, allowing teams to efficiently manage their distributed architectures while maintaining high standards of governance and security.

Understanding "portal" versus "platform" in the context of IDP

The acronym IDP stands for internal developer platform, but there's often confusion between the concepts of a "portal" and a "platform" in this context. A developer portal acts as a gateway, providing teams with self-service access to resources, documentation and tools they need to interact with various services and APIs. In contrast, a developer platform goes beyond just providing access; it serves as the underlying infrastructure that empowers developers to build, deploy and manage their applications autonomously.

While portals are essential for centralizing resources and improving the developer experience, platforms offer the robust capabilities needed to support the entire software lifecycle. In modern platform engineering, both elements are crucial, but it's important to recognize that a comprehensive IDP integrates both a portal for ease of use and an application platform for functional depth and scalability.

The role of Kubernetes and containerization

Kubernetes has been nothing short of revolutionary in the world of platform engineering. As the de facto standard for container orchestration, Kubernetes enables scalable and portable applications that can be deployed across various environments, from on-premise datacenters to public clouds. This flexibility is further enhanced through Red Hat OpenShift, which provides a distribution with Kubernetes as its foundation and additional features like security, compliance, CI/CD and developer tools, to name just a few.

Containerization, a technology closely tied to Kubernetes, has allowed organizations to package applications and their dependencies into containers, ensuring consistent behavior across different environments. This has led to more efficient resource management and has made it easier for teams to adopt cloud-native architectures, further increasing the need for sophisticated platform engineering practices.

However, as beneficial as containerization is, it also introduces new challenges for IT organizations. Managing containers locally can be complex, particularly when dealing with different container runtimes or when trying to ensure compatibility with production environments. Developers often struggle with setting up and maintaining local development environments that mirror their Kubernetes-based production clusters, leading to issues like configuration drift and inconsistent testing outcomes.

Container management with Podman Desktop

Podman Desktop emerges as a solution to these challenges, offering a more developer-friendly approach to container management. Podman Desktop provides a graphical interface that simplifies the process of running, visualizing and managing containers on a developer's local machine. It integrates effectively with Kubernetes, allowing developers to build, test and deploy their applications in a way that closely mimics production environments. This helps ensure that their local setups are consistent with the environments in which their applications will ultimately run.

Moreover, Podman supports rootless containers, enhancing security by running containers without requiring elevated privileges. This makes it easier for developers to adopt containerization in their workflows while maintaining a high level of security and consistency across development and production environments.

Focus on developer experience

A good developer experience focuses on reducing frustration and friction for developers and other product team members by reducing unnecessary cognitive load. This has become a priority in platform engineering initiatives. Frameworks like Backstage are at the forefront of this trend, offering platform teams a customizable platform where they can access all the services, APIs and documentation they need in one place. Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift also contribute to improving the developer experience by automating many aspects of application deployment and management, freeing developers to focus on writing code and delivering features. The ideal combination of both can be found in Red Hat Developer Hub, which blends with Kubernetes-native technologies and offers a broad range of preselected plug-ins for platform engineering teams to start their IDP initiatives.

Security and compliance in platform engineering

As software systems become more complex and interconnected, security and compliance have emerged as critical concerns in platform engineering. With the rise of microservices, containerization and multicloud environments, ensuring that applications are secure and compliant with industry regulations has become increasingly challenging.

Platform engineering teams are now tasked with integrating security practices into every stage of the development lifecycle, from design to deployment. This approach, often referred to as DevSecOps, ensures that security is not an afterthought but a fundamental aspect of the development process. Red Hat OpenShift offers robust security features, such as role-based access control (RBAC), network policies and audit logging, which help organizations meet these stringent security requirements.

To further address these challenges, Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline provides a comprehensive solution that embeds security and compliance checks directly into the CI/CD pipelines. This platform allows for the automatic enforcement of security policies and compliance standards throughout the application development lifecycle. By integrating with tools like Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline ensures that every build, test and deployment process adheres to predefined security standards.

It offers features such as vulnerability scanning, policy enforcement and detailed audit trails, enabling teams to catch security issues early in the development process and ensuring that only compliant and secure code makes it into production. This reduces the risk of security breaches and compliance violations, providing peace of mind that the software being deployed meets the highest standards of security and regulatory compliance. By automating these critical aspects of security, Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline helps organizations achieve a more robust and security-hardened development process, enabling platform engineers to focus on innovation without compromising on security.

Predictions for 2025

With advancements in technology and evolving business needs, platform engineering is expected to continue to transform. Here are some key predictions for the state of platform engineering in 2025:

• Increased integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML): AI/ML will play a more significant role in platform engineering, particularly in automating tasks such as infrastructure management, anomaly detection and performance optimization. These technologies will enable platform teams to manage more complex systems with greater efficiency. The further integration of AI capabilities in applications and the necessary infrastructure components will become an essential part of successful platforms.
• Focus on sustainability: As environmental concerns continue to rise, platform engineering will increasingly focus on sustainability. This will involve optimizing resource usage, reducing the carbon footprint of datacenters and adopting green practices in software development and deployment.
• Advancements in IDPs, curation and evolution: IDPs will continue to evolve, becoming more sophisticated and user-friendly and easier to be maintained. We can expect to see portals like Red Hat Developer Hub offering deeper integrations with AI-driven recommendations and enhanced support for various technologies, processes and environments.
• Enhanced security and compliance automation: With the growing complexity of software systems, the automation of security and compliance processes will become even more critical. Tools that can automatically enforce security policies, detect vulnerabilities and ensure compliance across diverse environments will become standard in platform engineering.
• Adaptive observability: Observability will become more adaptive and will offer deeper insights into distributed systems. By taking advantage of AI-driven analytics, observability platforms will transition from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization. This shift will enable teams to anticipate issues and streamline operations through automated anomaly detection, performance prediction and better resource allocation.

Staying ahead in a dynamic landscape

The evolution of platform engineering reflects the dynamic nature of the software industry, with trends like the rise of IDPs, the widespread adoption of Kubernetes and containerization and a growing emphasis on developer experience, team velocity and security. As we look towards the future, platform engineering will continue to adapt, integrating new technologies and practices to meet the ever-changing demands of software development.

For organizations that stay ahead of these trends, platform engineering offers a powerful means to achieve their goals and maintain a competitive edge in the fast-paced world of technology. Learn more about what Red Hat has to offer!

Where to learn more

• 5 myths about platform engineering, debunked
• Unveiling Backstage: A developer's guide to the CNCF project
• What is platform engineering and why do we need it?
• Achieve more with less using Red Hat Developer Hub's self-service features
• Red Hat Developer Hub: Your gateway to seamless development
• Read the e-book: Developer Portals: Prepare to Perform with Red Hat Developer Hub
• Learning path: Application development with Red Hat Developer Hub
• Learning path: Install and configure Red Hat Developer Hub and explore templating basics

Visit the Red Hat Developer Hub product page.