Platform Engineering as a (Community) Service

As organisations drive towards cloud native, many of them have the same recurring requirement: A solid platform to underpin and empower their dev teams to build great software. Enter “The platform" - be this Kubernetes (K8S), some cloud specific services, CloudFoundry, a DIY special or some combo, every engineer and their boss wants a platform. But what does it take to build such a platform, and build it well? Especially when it needs to accommodate multiple teams, of varying skills, doing similar as well as very different things. How do you build a platform which is fit for purpose? This talk will explore these questions, looking at key technical aspects to consider, but just as important, organisational, soft skills and other factors which form part of the platform engineering discipline. Drawing on experience of working across a variety of clients with different setups, we look at what it takes to build a platform which is fit to serve the communities which will ultimately use it.