Platform engineering isn’t replacing DevOps — it’s the next critical step in evolving how teams manage complexity, scale efficiently and support developers with safer, more consistent systems.

Developers need more than speed; they need safety, consistency and systems that reduce overhead instead of adding to it. That’s where platform engineering steps in. The concept has gained traction across the industry, but Google LLC is helping customers move beyond theory, according to Nick Eberts (pictured, right), product manager, Google Cloud, at Google.

Google Cloud’s Ameenah Burhan and Nick Eberts talk with theCUBE about how platform engineering supports developer agility and reduces operational friction.

“It’s really important to acknowledge that DevOps is not tools; it’s a process. And platform engineering … doesn’t remove any of the importance of the process of DevOps,” he said. “In fact, it enhances it. I think that platform engineering is born out of a necessity. Why did DevOps pop off? Cloud, APIs. You could move fast. You had small businesses and big companies doing shadow IT really fast, and that’s great. It turns out moving fast actually delivers business value.”

Eberts and Ameenah Burhan (left), solutions architect for Google Cloud, spoke with theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson for the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series, during an exclusive interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how platform engineering supports developer agility and reduces operational friction. (* Disclosure below.)

Platform engineering boosts speed and experimentation

One of the core promises of platform engineering is reducing cognitive load for developers. By abstracting away infrastructure complexity, internal platforms give developers a “vending machine” experience: Push a button and a fully scaffolded environment appears, ready for business logic.

“Computers are tough,” Eberts said. “Kubernetes is tough. Your software engineer can maybe pick … a three-tier app … push the button and then get a scaffold of a golden path that represents that and gets started quicker. They can just work on writing business logic. I think it makes their life easier and more simple.”

This speed isn’t just about fast starts. It also enables more experimentation, better iteration cycles and, ultimately, higher efficiency. When backend complexity is hidden from developers, it can be optimized behind the scenes without disrupting their workflows, according to Eberts.

“It’s not about just starting quicker, it’s about being able to do more experiments in volume,” he said. “But then there’s a whole other side of value … if you abstract away the infrastructure from the developers, then you can move it around and re-bin, pack it and replace it as you need to and do things in a much more efficient, cost-effective manner.”

The effect is tangible across industries, especially as more customers deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning pipelines. Google Cloud helps developers work with AI in approachable, scalable ways, from training large models to optimizing graphics processing unit usage for inference, according to Burhan.

“Platforms help to abstract that,” she said. “There’s the testing, there’s the data split, there’s all that type of stuff that’s happening on the backend that you don’t have to worry about, and you could get reports and tweak things. It makes it more approachable for just regular people who are at least somewhat tech-savvy. Platforms can do a good job of making it less intimidating for those who aren’t familiar or classically trained in school for AI.”

Standardizing tools and aligning teams

As organizations scale, complexity creeps in. Teams often build their own tooling and pipelines, which can introduce inconsistencies, duplicate effort and security risks. Platform engineering tackles these issues by creating standardized, reusable templates, according to Burhan.

“A platform should always be treated as a product,” she said. “Just like a product, you need a product manager who’s going to create roadmaps, collect feedback and align with business goals.”

This approach ensures platform teams stay responsive to developer needs, Burhan added. Even when companies don’t have large, dedicated platform teams, platform engineering encourages cross-functional collaboration between site reliability engineers, security specialists and developers to enforce best practices.

“You probably have someone like that in your organization and just kind of collaborating with people,” Burhan said. “Lean on your SRE specialist or your security specialist to make sure that you’re making all of those best practices and golden paths for people.”

Standardization also supports cost-efficiency. Many companies working with Google Cloud struggle with either too few clusters burdened by tech debt or too many scattered clusters that are hard to manage. Google Cloud helps clients find the right balance, according to Eberts.

“They [may have] started and built one or two or three massive clusters, and they’ve got this tech debt just sitting right there,” Eberts said. “Then, on the other side, you’ve got customers who gave everybody a cluster. What I see from both sides of that coin is they’re both trying to move toward the middle.”

Community-driven open-source efforts are also playing a role. Google Cloud collaborates with the Kubernetes Special Interest Group multicluster working group to drive upstream improvements and ensure downstream tooling remains compatible with shared standards, according to Eberts.

“We’re working with the downstream multicluster tool providers like Argo CD and Flux … making sure that they’re looking at using this list … [which] kind of removes the need from either side to have to create a bunch of bespoke unique tools to deal with multicluster situations, which I think everyone is in,” Eberts said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Google Cloud: Passport to Containers” interview series. Neither Google Cloud, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE