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Can Platform Engineering and DevOps Coexist? Here’s What You Need to Know

DevOps has been the dominant methodology for achieving faster software delivery, improved collaboration, and automation. However, the rise of Platform Engineering has introduced a new dimension to how organizations build and manage their infrastructure.
February 24, 2025
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Introduction

DevOps has been the dominant methodology for achieving faster software delivery, improved collaboration, and automation. However, the rise of Platform Engineering has introduced a new dimension to how organizations build and manage their infrastructure. This has led to an important question: Can Platform Engineering and DevOps coexist, or are they competing approaches?

This article will explore the relationship between Platform Engineering and DevOps, their key differences, overlapping areas, and how organizations can integrate both to streamline software delivery, improve developer experience, and enhance operational efficiency.

Understanding DevOps

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of practices that aims to bridge the gap between development and operations teams. It emphasizes automation, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), collaboration, and rapid software delivery.

Key Principles of DevOps:

  1. Collaboration – Breaking down silos between developers, operations, and security teams.
  2. Automation – Leveraging tools for CI/CD, infrastructure as code (IaC), and monitoring.
  3. Continuous Integration and Delivery – Ensuring seamless code integration, automated testing, and rapid deployments.
  4. Monitoring and Feedback Loops – Proactively identifying and resolving issues.

Challenges with DevOps:

  • Inconsistent developer experience across different teams.
  • Tool sprawl leading to complexity in managing multiple DevOps tools.
  • Lack of standardization in infrastructure and workflows.

What is Platform Engineering?

Platform Engineering is an emerging discipline focused on building self-service platforms that provide developers with the necessary tools, workflows, and automation to streamline software development.

Key Components of Platform Engineering:

  1. Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) – Abstracting complexity and offering self-service capabilities.
  2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) – Automating cloud resource provisioning.
  3. Developer Portals – Providing centralized access to documentation, environments, and tools.
  4. Standardization – Ensuring consistency across infrastructure and deployment processes.

Benefits of Platform Engineering:

  • Improves Developer Experience (DX) by reducing cognitive load.
  • Enhances Security and Compliance by enforcing best practices.
  • Increases Operational Efficiency by minimizing repetitive tasks for SREs and DevOps engineers.

Key Differences Between DevOps and Platform Engineering

How DevOps and Platform Engineering Can Coexist

Despite their differences, DevOps and Platform Engineering are not mutually exclusive. In fact, when integrated correctly, they can complement each other to create a highly efficient software development and operations workflow.

1. Platform Engineering Enhances DevOps Practices

  • Platform Engineering provides standardized infrastructure and automation, allowing DevOps teams to focus on improving CI/CD pipelines.
  • Developer self-service portals reduce the dependency on DevOps engineers for provisioning and deployment tasks.

2. DevOps Provides the Culture, Platform Engineering Provides the Tools

  • DevOps emphasizes collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement.
  • Platform Engineering introduces centralized tools and workflows that help DevOps teams enforce best practices.

3. Self-Service Platforms Empower Developers

  • Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) built by platform engineers give developers easy access to test environments, deployment pipelines, and infrastructure resources.
  • This improves developer productivity without requiring constant intervention from DevOps engineers.

4. Security and Compliance Alignment

  • DevOps security practices like Shift-Left Security can be embedded into platform engineering solutions.
  • Platform teams can enforce security policies within infrastructure automation and CI/CD pipelines.

5. Observability and Monitoring

  • DevOps teams use tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK Stack for monitoring applications.
  • Platform Engineering helps standardize observability solutions and ensure logs, metrics, and traces are consistently available across environments.

Implementing Platform Engineering Alongside DevOps

If your organization is adopting Platform Engineering alongside DevOps, here’s a step-by-step approach to making them work together effectively:

Step 1: Assess DevOps Maturity

  • Evaluate current DevOps processes, tooling, and pain points.
  • Identify areas where self-service automation can enhance efficiency.

Step 2: Build an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)

  • Use tools like Backstage, Crossplane, and Terraform to create a self-service infrastructure platform.
  • Provide easy-to-use APIs, UI dashboards, and CLIs for developers.

Step 3: Automate Infrastructure with GitOps

  • Implement GitOps workflows using ArgoCD or Flux to manage infrastructure as code.
  • Ensure DevOps teams can deploy changes in a declarative, version-controlled manner.

Step 4: Standardize CI/CD Pipelines

  • Define best practices for CI/CD across teams using tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI/CD.
  • Embed security and compliance policies within pipelines.

Step 5: Monitor and Optimize

  • Implement observability dashboards using Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
  • Gather developer feedback to refine the platform engineering strategy.

Conclusion

DevOps and Platform Engineering can coexist and complement each other. While DevOps focuses on culture, collaboration, and automation, Platform Engineering standardizes and simplifies infrastructure, creating self-service capabilities that enhance the developer experience.

By integrating Platform Engineering with DevOps, organizations can achieve faster deployments, improved security, and a seamless developer workflow—ensuring scalability, agility, and operational excellence.

By embracing the strengths of both DevOps and Platform Engineering, organizations can future-proof their software delivery processes and achieve higher efficiency in cloud-native development.

Looking to integrate Platform Engineering with DevOps? Contact us at Atmosly to streamline your cloud-native development!

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What is the main difference between DevOps and Platform Engineering?
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DevOps focuses on collaboration, CI/CD automation, and fast software delivery, while Platform Engineering builds self-service platforms that standardize and simplify infrastructure management for developers.

Can an organization use both DevOps and Platform Engineering?
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Yes! Platform Engineering complements DevOps by providing developers with self-service tools and automation, improving efficiency while maintaining DevOps principles.

How does Platform Engineering improve Developer Experience (DX)?
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Platform Engineering reduces the cognitive load on developers by offering standardized tools, automation, and infrastructure-as-code solutions via Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs).

What tools are commonly used in DevOps vs. Platform Engineering?
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DevOps Tools: Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitOps (Flux, ArgoCD) and Platform Engineering Tools: Backstage, Crossplane, Kubernetes, Terraform

Is Platform Engineering replacing DevOps?
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No, Platform Engineering is an evolution of DevOps that aims to streamline developer workflows rather than replace DevOps practices.

How does Platform Engineering impact CI/CD pipelines?
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Platform Engineering helps standardize CI/CD pipelines by integrating automation, security, and compliance into self-service developer platforms, reducing manual intervention.

What are the key benefits of adopting Platform Engineering alongside DevOps?
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Improved developer autonomy through self-service capabilities and Consistent infrastructure and security policies and Reduced burden on DevOps engineers for repetitive tasks

How does Platform Engineering enhance security and compliance?
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By embedding security best practices into self-service platforms, Platform Engineering ensures consistent policy enforcement, role-based access control (RBAC), and compliance automation.

How can organizations implement Platform Engineering effectively?
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Assess DevOps maturity, Build an Internal Developer Platform (IDP), Automate infrastructure with GitOps & Terraform, Standardize CI/CD pipelines, and Implement observability and monitoring

What role do SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) play in Platform Engineering?
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SREs help design, implement, and maintain self-service platforms, ensuring scalability, resilience, and security while aligning with DevOps and Platform Engineering principles.

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