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Version: 14.x

Platform Engineering

Platform Engineering is the discipline of designing, building, and maintaining self-service toolchains and workflows that enable development teams to build and deliver software. At its core there is the Internal Developer Platform (IDP), a foundational ecosystem that acts as a centralized hub with self-service access to tools and services, and embedded best-practices, recommendations and guardrails for developers. This allows to release applications faster, more reliably, and with greater autonomy. By treating the platform as a product and developers as its customers, Platform Engineering optimizes the whole software development lifecycle (SDLC), reduces cognitive load, and enforces governance without sacrificing speed.

This approach evolved from DevOps principles, aiming to solve the complexities of modern cloud-native environments. While DevOps focuses on the cultural and methodological fusion of development and operations, Platform Engineering provides the tangible infrastructure and automated pathways to make those principles a reality.

Core Principles of Platform Engineering with Mia-Platform​

Mia-Platform is an AI-Native Developer Platform Foundation that empowers organizations to scale agile and Platform Engineering practices, drive automation and software reuse, streamline data delivery and harness the full potential of AI.

Self-Service and Developer Autonomy​

A key goal of Platform Engineering is to empower developers with tools and procedures that compress the SDLC, thus enabling faster value generation. Mia-Platform achieves this by offering a self-service platform where development teams can independently manage the entire lifecycle of their applications. This includes:

This self-service model eliminates organizational bottlenecks, reduces friction, and allows developers to focus on writing code and delivering business value.

Golden Paths and Standardization​

Platform Engineering, through Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), encompasses well-defined, built-in workflows, i.e. best practices, recommendations, and security measures for creating and deploying software. Mia-Platform promotes and facilitates the creation of these "golden paths", "paved roads" and "guardrails" through:

  • Project Templates: New projects can be started in a few clicks, inheriting pre-configured settings, tools, and CI/CD pipelines. This ensures consistency and adherence to best practices from day one.
  • Reusable Components: A software catalog of plugins, templates, and applications accelerates development and promotes the reuse of proven solutions across the organization.
  • Standardized Deployment: By leveraging a GitOps methodology and offering integrations with various CI/CD tools like GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins, Mia-Platform ensures a consistent and automated deployment process.

Abstraction of Complexity​

Modern cloud-native architectures, often based on Kubernetes, can be overwhelmingly complex. Platform Engineering aims to abstract this complexity from developers. Mia-Platform provides an intuitive user interface and a set of automated tools that manage the underlying infrastructure, allowing developers to:

  • Manage microservice configurations without needing deep Kubernetes expertise.
  • Securely expose APIs through a managed API Gateway.
  • Monitor application performance and health via integrated observability tools.

By reducing the cognitive load on developers, Mia-Platform enables them to be more productive and innovative.

Building Your Internal Developer Platform (IDP)​

Mia-Platform serves as the foundation for building a robust IDP tailored to your organization's specific needs. An IDP built with Mia-Platform centralizes all necessary tools and resources, providing a unified and cohesive developer experience. Key components include:

  • A Centralized Console: A single point of control for designing, deploying, and monitoring applications and infrastructure.
  • An Internal Developer Portal: The interactive, intelligent interface that allows developers to access platform tools, resources, documentation and services in self-service fashion.
  • A Software Catalog: A comprehensive registry of all available software components, services, APIs, and microservices within the platform. It helps developers discover and reuse existing assets, but it also feeds AI with contextual knowledge.
  • Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Integrated and standardized pipelines for continuous integration and delivery.
  • Observability Tools: Built-in features for monitoring, logging, and tracing.
  • Secure API Management: Tools for exposing, securing, and managing APIs.

Key Benefits​

Adopting a Platform Engineering approach with Mia-Platform delivers significant benefits across the organization:

  • Increased Developer Productivity: By providing self-service tools and automating repetitive tasks, developers can focus more on programming and less on infrastructure, leading to a significant reduction in time-to-market.
  • Improved Governance and Security: Centralized management and standardized templates ensure that all projects adhere to corporate security policies and best practices from the design phase.
  • Enhanced Reliability and Resilience: Automated deployment pipelines and integrated monitoring tools help identify issues early and ensure the stability of applications in production.
  • Reduced Operational Costs: Automation, resource optimization, and the reuse of components lead to lower maintenance and operational costs.
  • Greater Accountability: By providing visibility and traceability throughout the entire DevOps cycle, it becomes easier to manage and monitor the evolution of projects and resource usage.