What is Platform Engineering? Free Up Your Development Team
If you manage a technology team or are part of one, you have likely noticed a silent but costly problem: your developers are spending less and less time coding and more time “wrestling” with tools that have nothing to do with their code.
A few years ago, being a developer meant writing business logic. Today, it seems one has to be an expert in clouds, security, networks, and deployments. This has created a bottleneck that stifles innovation.
This is where Platform Engineering comes in. It is not just another buzzword; it is the solution to get your team back to doing what they do best: creating software.
Why are developers burned out?
To understand the solution, let’s first look at the problem. In the tech world, we use the term “Cognitive Load”.
Imagine it this way: you hire an expert chef for your restaurant. But before they can cook a single dish, you demand that they build the kitchen, install the gas, grow the vegetables, and design the plates. The result? The chef is exhausted, the food takes a long time to come out, and quality drops.
This is what happens today. Modern architectures are powerful but complex. If you force every developer to configure their own infrastructure from scratch for every project, you are wasting their talent and burning out their energy.
What is an IDP (Internal Developer Platform)?
The answer to this chaos is the Internal Developer Platform (or IDP).
To put it simply: An IDP is like an infrastructure vending machine.
In the old model (or current one in many companies), if a developer needed a server or a database, they had to open a ticket with the Operations team and wait for days, or try to configure it themselves and risk making mistakes.
With an IDP, the developer enters an internal web portal, clicks on “Create new service,” and the platform delivers everything ready: the server, the database, and security connections, all configured automatically in minutes. No tickets. No waiting. No need to be a systems expert.
What are “Golden Paths” in Development and why do they improve productivity?
In Platform Engineering, we talk a lot about Golden Paths.
Imagine your team needs to deploy an application. There are a thousand ways to do it, and 990 are complicated or insecure. The platform team designs a “master template” (the Golden Path) that already includes:
- The safest way to do it.
- The fastest way.
- The tools the company prefers.
The developer doesn’t feel restricted, but relieved. They don’t have to research how to connect security or how to monitor the application; the platform has already done it for them. It’s like driving with a GPS that takes you on the traffic-free route: you arrive sooner and with less stress.
Difference between DevOps and Platform Engineering
This is a very common search on Google. Wasn’t DevOps supposed to fix this?
- DevOps is a culture, a working philosophy where development and operations collaborate.
- Platform Engineering is the tool that makes that culture scalable.
Think of DevOps as the idea of “working together” and Platform Engineering as the “tool” you build so that working together isn’t a constant headache.
Key benefits for your business
Implementing a platform strategy isn’t just for “tech giants,” it is for any company that wants to:
- Accelerate Time-to-Market: New employees are productive from day one, not month one.
- Reduce “Ticket Ops”: No more email chains or tickets to ask for permissions or basic resources. It is self-service.
- Standardize without imposing: By using platform templates, you ensure that all company software complies with security and quality standards, without having to police every person.
How does Luce IT help you make the leap?
We know that moving from a traditional model to Platform Engineering sounds like a giant project. But it doesn’t have to be. At Luce IT, we have developed SmartOps, a solution designed to simplify this transition.
We take care of the complexity “under the hood” (Kubernetes, clouds, security) so you can offer your teams that simple and powerful “vending machine.” We help your organization adopt these Golden Paths, reducing operational load and returning agility to your business.
If you want your team to stop configuring servers and go back to creating value, let’s talk about SmartOps.
FAQ
What is the difference between DevOps and Platform Engineering?
DevOps is a cultural philosophy that seeks collaboration between development and operations. Platform Engineering is the practical evolution of that culture: it is responsible for building the internal tools and platforms (IDP) that allow developers to apply DevOps autonomously and without friction.
When should my company invest in an IDP (Internal Developer Platform)?
You should consider it if you notice that your developers spend more time configuring environments than coding, if “time-to-market” is lengthening due to infrastructure bottlenecks, or if the complexity of your cloud is generating frequent errors and frustration in the team.
What benefits does an IDP bring to the business?
The main benefits are speed (accelerates development and deployment), efficiency (reduces operational costs and support tickets), security (guarantees compliance with regulations by default), and talent retention (improves employee experience by reducing stress).
Is it necessary to use Kubernetes to have an Internal Developer Platform?
It is not strictly mandatory, but it is the industry standard. Most modern platforms are built on Kubernetes due to its flexibility and ability to orchestrate containers, which greatly facilitates the creation of standardized and scalable environments.
