What is Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering is an approach that focuses on the creation of an ecosystem that standardises and automates the creation and maintenance of services that are reusable and shared between technology teams, promoting greater efficiency, agility, consistency and collaboration in the software development process.
According to a recent article by McKinsey Digital, by acting as a self-service platform for development teams, this platform reduces manual work, increases process efficiency and promotes standardisation, security and compliance.
Due to all these benefits, this practice has been growing and establishing itself in the industry. Gartner estimates that by 2026, 80% of large software engineering organisations will establish platform engineering teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery.
Why we opted for this solution
As we evolved in the maturity of using the cloud, we understood that platform engineering could be a great ally in providing more robustness, governance and simplification to our day-to-day work.
When we decided to invest in this platform engineering model, our first step in 2022 was to review and build the second version of the landing zone in Azure. This work resulted in the provision of a more complete infrastructure, capable of absorbing automations in a more practical way to better meet the technical requirements of network, security and scalability, for example.
All this was necessary so that, in 2023, we could begin to develop and adopt the concept of Tech Products in the cloud, enabled through the Internal Developer Portal (IDP), which we now call Platform Code.
How our Tech Ecosystem works tech
To automate the software engineering cycle from initial development to the delivery of the solution in production, we have a catalogue of services, where the user selects the product they want to use and implement. This ecosystem is made up of several integrated solutions, including:
- Azure DevOps
- Internal Application and API Catalogues
- Platform Code
The main objective of this ecosystem is to provide a unified experience for our software and infrastructure development teams, as well as to provide application and infrastructure components with greater agility and efficiency in the delivery of applications and solutions for the business.
Previously, this process was time-consuming and involved several areas. Now, with the ecosystem, it is possible to deliver faster, with higher quality and adherence to company standards, generating greater operational efficiency and allowing our teams to respond more agile to market demands.
Lessons learnt and plans for the future
Throughout this process, we have seen how important it is to build a solid foundation to maintain structured governance of the environment. All the standards established in our cloud reference architectures are essential for the construction and maintenance of this entire ecosystem in the long term.
At the moment, we have chosen to start developing this ecosystem with a focus on Microsoft Azure, as it is one of our main providers used in Brazil. However, our plans for the future include continuing to evolve the solution and expanding its scope to other cloud providers.
This whole initiative is being carried out by a multidisciplinary team, made up of Vivo’s Technical Architecture, Cloud Architecture and DevOps, Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure and Digital Security teams, a collaborative effort that reinforces our commitment to digitise in order to bring us closer together.
