CloudCast: 2023 Look Ahead to Platform Engineering

The Cloudcast discusses platform engineering with the founder and CEO of RackN, Rob Hirschfeld. Starting around the 10-minute mark, the conversation covers the goals and best practices of platform engineering.

Topic 1 – Welcome back to the show, it was great to see you in person at events recently. What have you been focusing on the last couple of years?

Topic 2 – There’s been a lot of discussion about Platform Engineering over the last 6+ months. You’ve been around this space for a while. We’re trying to understand if PE is different from DevOps or SRE or Cloud Platform in the past, or an evolution. Is PE just a common platform maintained with reusable tools, regardless of the infrastructure? 

Topic 3 – I’ve heard people say that Cloud Platform and Platform Engineering are colleagues. where one owns/operates the platform, and the other is the “product manager” to the application teams. Is this realistic? 

Topic 4 – What does “good” look like for Platform Engineering? Is the goal a frictionless developer experience? Are developer consistency and efficiency valid goals? Are there KPIs or Metrics that “good” teams are striving towards?

Topic 5 –  Any interesting technologies that you’re seeing that make Platform Engineering easier, or more manageable? 

Topic 6 – Any team dynamics that you’re seeing that make Platform Engineering easier, or more manageable?