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Sep 11 2024
Software

5 Ways an Agency Can Benefit from Platform Engineering

Take DevOps to the next level to manage tool sprawl, implement governance, strengthen security and more.

Developers often face a convoluted web of infrastructure and a high volume of tools to navigate. Platform engineering helps resolve friction in the development process by creating an internal developer platform (IDP), a self-service resource that serves up a collection of tools, services and automated workflows. Here’s what you need to know:

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Can Platform Engineering Reduce Tool Sprawl?

IDPs create a golden path for developers by providing a standardized set of tools and services so they don’t have to search for them on their own. By essentially creating templates and pipelines for developers to do their work, IDPs can help developers figure out that part of the development process, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.

RELATED: Platform engineering public sector systems development.

How Can Platform Engineering Improve Productivity?

IDPs make it easier for agencies to release software faster by using automation to provision infrastructure, configure servers and services, deploy applications, load balance, support monitoring and alerting, and more. With more automation and a golden path, developers are better set up for success and no longer have to spend time on manual and repetitive tasks.

Neil Wylie
Platform engineering incorporates automated security scanning tools integrated into the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline.”

Neil Wylie Chief Architect for DevOps and SRE, CDW

Can Agencies Use Platform Engineering To Establish Governance?

IDPs can be used to create a framework for developers to work within that establishes and enforces policies, procedures and controls around software development. This may entail enforcing standardized configurations, infusing Infrastructure as Code principles, setting access controls and permissions, logging all changes and actions within a platform, implementing budget controls and more.

EXPLORE: How user journey mapping is used in state and local agencies.

Can Platform Engineering Increase Scalability?

Platform engineering can help an agency juggle growing workloads and traffic by enabling it to scale its applications and services through containerization and orchestration technologies that automate the deployment and management of containerized applications, applying auto-scaling rules to manage resources and load balancing to distribute heavy network traffic.

DIVE DEEPER: How platform engineering and AI enhance each other.

How Does Platform Engineering Improve Security?

Platform engineering incorporates automated security scanning tools integrated into the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline to detect vulnerabilities earlier, which helps eliminate bugs and defects further down the road. Automated compliance checks help verify that infrastructure and applications meet industry regulations and internal security policies.

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