Beyond DevOps: Integrating SRE and Platform Engineering for Holistic Success

As you may have heard, DevOps is on the verge of death. It's about software development and how the DevOps culture has been detrimental to organizations. I mentioned in my last article that DevOps is about to break down silos and improve communication with developers and operators. In reality, companies reduced their operating team and combined developers and operators. Consequently, developers had a lot more tasks to complete, while operating tasks were handled by a fewer number of employees. Obviously, this isn't the main idea of DevOps, but it shows that when the concept is handled incorrectly, developers aren't fully empowered, which reduces software quality.

It became clear, however, that breaking down silos, even by using specific development best practices such as automation and pipelines, didn't fully describe how large companies, in particular, actually created and managed large software portfolios and sprawling infrastructure as cloud computing and container platforms developed. Instead of enabling a lot of communication, the thinking shifted to removing it.

As you might have guessed, DevOps isn't perfect for all software development scenarios. At least, not yet. The aim is to relieve developers by automating the underlying system and making it self-repairing as much as possible.

There are other concepts that attempt to prevent the death of DevOps while enabling the software engineer. These concepts are site reliability engineering and platform engineering.

It is the responsibility of a site reliability engineer (SRE) to write software to reduce manual intervention or add new features. An SRE is primarily responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of software systems. Monitoring systems, identifying and resolving problems, implementing automation, and improving incident response processes are some of the tasks involved.

In contrast to the SRE, who focuses on the underlying infrastructure and improves collaboration between development and operations, a platform engineer is responsible for enabling and supporting developers. As part of a digital transformation, platform engineering is an emerging trend to modernize enterprise software delivery. An engineering platform is developed and maintained by a dedicated product team, providing tools and capabilities that are common, reusable, and interface with complex infrastructure to meet the needs of software developers. Designing, building and maintaining internal platforms and tooling that support various aspects of software development, including development environments, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, and testing frameworks, is the responsibility of the platform engineer.

In a nutshell, Platform Engineering recognizes that infrastructure is not a goal in and of itself for developer teams. It is not really about supporting container platforms, for example, but about supporting developers in large organizations. This is similar to the original DevOps philosophies. What are developers looking for from the platform? Communication between Platform Engineering and application development teams is vital. It's possible for application developers to handle infrastructure maintenance on the side, but it will slow the delivery of software with direct business impact. In addition to reducing duplication in resources across development teams, Platform Engineering teams should also provide developers with tools they enjoy using, ensure security and compliance, provide self-service and automation wherever possible, and make onboarding new developers easier.

In summary, the evolving landscape of DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Platform Engineering underscores a unified objective: enhancing software development and operational processes to deliver high-quality, reliable, and scalable systems. While DevOps emphasizes collaboration and continuous integration, SRE introduces rigorous operational practices to maintain service reliability, and Platform Engineering focuses on creating robust frameworks to streamline development workflows. Together, these paradigms contribute to a more agile and resilient software delivery ecosystem, driving innovation and efficiency within organizations. This ultimately leads to better customer experiences and greater competitive advantage. Organizations that embrace these paradigms can thrive in the ever-changing digital landscape.