Platform Engineering vs DevOps: What's The Difference?
By Aaron F. February 21st, 2023
Both DevOps and Platform Engineering are fields that are focused on enhancing the collaboration and communication between development teams and operations teams, but they go about accomplishing this aim in very different ways.
DevOps is an acronym that stands for "Development Operations," and it refers to a collection of methods and tools that are designed to automate the software development lifecycle in order to improve both the speed and the quality of software delivery. The objective of the DevOps movement is to eliminate the communication barrier that exists between software development teams and IT operations teams by promoting a culture of collaboration, automation, and ongoing quality improvement. Implementing processes such as continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment allows for the accomplishment of this goal. When it comes to the management of the creation, testing, and deployment of software, DevOps places a strong emphasis on the utilization of automation tools and technologies such as Ansible, Jenkins, and Docker.
On the other hand, Platform Engineering is a subfield of software engineering that focuses on the construction and upkeep of the infrastructure and tools that are necessary for the process of software development. Platform engineers are in charge of designing, constructing, and maintaining the underlying infrastructure that is necessary for the process of software development. This encompasses tasks such as the provisioning and configuration of servers, storage, and networking, as well as the creation and maintenance of the tools and frameworks that developers utilize in order to design, test, and deploy software.
The software development process itself is the primary emphasis of DevOps, whereas the infrastructure and tools that support the software development process are the primary concerns of Platform Engineering. This distinction is one of the most important distinctions between the two areas. One major distinction between the two is that DevOps places a greater emphasis on the process of delivering software from beginning to finish, whereas Platform Engineering places a greater emphasis on the underlying infrastructure and tools.
In actuality, there is frequently some overlap between the two areas, and many companies have teams that mix components of both DevOps and Platform Engineering. In addition, there is a lot of overlap between the two fields. For instance, a DevOps team might be in charge of automating the software delivery process, whereas a Platform Engineering team might be in charge of constructing and maintaining the infrastructure and tools that support the software delivery process. Both teams share the responsibility of supporting the software delivery process overall.
If a company wants to increase the speed of their software delivery while maintaining or even improving its quality, implementing DevOps and Platform Engineering is absolutely necessary. Platform Engineering helps firms construct and maintain the infrastructure and technologies that enable the software development process, whereas DevOps helps organizations automate the software development process and promote cooperation between the development teams and the operations teams. These subfields, when combined, have the potential to assist enterprises in enhancing their speed and quality of software delivery, as well as their agility and cost efficiency.
Both DevOps and Platform Engineering are fields that aim to improve the collaboration and communication between development teams and operations teams, but they do so in very different ways. In summary, DevOps and Platform Engineering are fields that focus on improving the collaboration and communication between development teams and operations teams. Platform Engineering is concerned with the construction and upkeep of the infrastructure and tools that are necessary for the software development process, whereas DevOps is primarily concerned with the automation of the software development process. Both of these areas are essential for businesses that wish to boost the speed and quality of their software delivery, and such businesses frequently require a combination of both fields.
Topics: Cloud Infrastructure, Platform Engineering