The key benefits of platform engineering are increased developer productivity, better quality of software, reduced lead time for deployment, and more stable applications, according to Puppet by Perforce’s 2024 State of Devops Report: The Evolution of Platform Engineering.
The report is based on a survey of 474 participants who work with a platform engineering team at their organizations. The survey was conducted in the summer of 2023.
Other benefits cited include cost savings, reduced time for product development, reduced errors, and reduced risk of security breaches. “Security has never just been IT’s job,” said Kapil Tandon, Puppet by Perforce vice president of product management, in the executive summary. “With secure tools built into most platforms, platform engineering is empowering more people than ever to take responsibility for security.”
Released March 19, the report can be downloaded from puppet.com. By standardizing tools and processes for developers, “platform engineering can act as a barrier against the chaos of tools, tasks, and information,” the report notes. Self-service environments give developers the flexibility to work quickly.
Another big takeaway from the survey, Puppet said, was the finding that platform engineering teams have become responsible for building and enforcing security processes. “Not only are platform engineering teams supporting security and compliance efforts, but they are tackling and troubleshooting issues around security in a way that suggests this is going to be a much larger trend,” the report states.
However, platform teams face challenges including increased complexity and getting buy-in from teams and developers. Securing resources for platform engineering also is a challenge, the report says.