I have been exploring a bit around platform engineering. Its a new paradigm in software development, an evolution of DevOps.

Gartner defines it as

Platform engineering is an emerging technology approach that can accelerate the delivery of applications and the pace at which they produce business value.

Platform engineering is a discipline within software engineering that focuses on building and maintaining the underlying infrastructure and architecture that supports the development and deployment of applications and services. It encompasses a wide range of activities, including designing and implementing scalable and reliable systems, automating deployment and testing processes, and managing infrastructure resources.

At its core, platform engineering is about creating a foundation that allows developers to focus on building and improving the applications and services that run on top of it. It requires a deep understanding of systems and software design, as well as a strong emphasis on reliability, security, and performance.

Platform engineering teams are responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure and tools that support the development and deployment of applications and services. This includes everything from the hardware and operating systems that run the applications, to the databases and storage systems that store data, to the network and security systems that protect the platform.

There are several emerging platforms that enable and support better platform engineering. One of these is Backstage. Backstage, open sourced by Spotify, enables platform engineering across an enterprise. It enables you to define a collection of resources in a catalog that can be put together into templates to ensure new development projects start from an acceptable and approved starting point, can be easily discovered by others across your organization and allows for a central management portal for developers to help them go faster. In essence, for any new project, you can come here and get a leap on getting started much faster.

This is pretty cool. Faster time to value is often key to giving you a competitive edge and a strong platform engineering practice with tools that enable this at scale will help get you there.