Syntasso

Our very own Abby Bangser is speaking today with the good folks at Tyk on how Platform Engineering can strike the right balance between API Governance and Developer Autonomy. You should definitely register to attend!

In Terraform, variables act as placeholders for dynamic values that can change at different configuration stages, much like variables in programming. By using variables, you can customise parts of your infrastructure configuration without modifying the core logic of your Terraform modules. Here's a comprehensive guide to managing Terraform variables - https://lnkd.in/evNJ4qSG #Syntasso #Terraform #DevOps #InfrastructureAsCode #CloudEngineering #Automation

We're big fans of Backstage here (for use as one part of a complete platform stack), and this latest video from Viktor Farcic provides some valuable comparisons to the Kubernetes project and explores why this could be destined to be the market leader of portals 🔮 And thanks for the shout-out to our work in this space, Viktor 🙌 https://lnkd.in/dv7e6rTm P.S. Drop us a DM if you want to experiment with our Kratix Backstage integration!

An interesting post from Todd R. Weiss and Jordan Chernev on The New Stack: Five Ways Your Platform Engineering Journey Can Derail “You must establish that feedback loop with your customers, the engineers,” said Scholz. “And you really must have your finger on the pulse and ask how things are going. There is a bit of art sometimes involved with picking the right tools that solve the problems that engineers must solve.” https://lnkd.in/e8rpX9An

We are pleased to announce our next in-person event in London on Tuesday 8th April. Join Diana Montalion and Cat Morris for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝘅: 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗕𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 "In today's fast-paced and interconnected world, the friction between product and technology teams often feels inevitable. Misaligned mindsets, priorities, and contextual biases create obstacles that slow progress, stifle innovation, breed frustration and encourage blame." Many thanks for the support of The Ministry of Software Design for organising and to Policy Expert for sponsoring. #softwaredevelopment #domaindrivendesign #softwarearchitecture

I'm getting a few requests to compare kro, KubeVela and Kratix for building platforms! Let me know in the comments if writing something would be interesting. Speaking from the Kratix perspective, there are a couple of philosophical differences: - We primarily focus on the platform-building persona rather than the developers or infra personas. Obviously, platform building is a team sport, but the primary focus impacts the framework UX. - We enable multiple people to contribute to the platform. We call this "multi-player mode", and this enables infra, security, specialists, etc, to contribute platform services (which we call Promises) - We've built fleet management into our framework from inception. Updating, upgrading, or fixing a service should propagate across your platform and broader estate. No more abandoned scaffolding or "puppies for Christmas"!

This is one of my favourite post to have written. I can't tell you how many times I have reiterated that while Kratix helps you build platforms, please please please only use it to build what makes your platform unique. Use Kratix to stitch together existing 3rd party tools or grab a Promise from the marketplace if you can when it is common stuff. But let it do the heavy lifting of the glue work while you focus on the unique aspects to your organisation and your development process. I seem to get a lot of nods at conferences but LinkedIn is known to be a tougher audience 😉 What do you think? Is this helpful? Obvious? Naive? How do you decide what to build for your internal platforms?

Check out Abby Bangser's latest blog and video, "Building Scalable Internal Developer Platforms with Syntasso Kratix Enterprise (SKE)" "One of Kratix’s biggest advantages is its ability to provide multiplayer mode, which reduces platform engineering bottlenecks and scales platform building. This is possible due to the unique Promise definition, which is an API for creating self-service and fleet-managed platform services." https://lnkd.in/ehgEVNaF

I tried to make this "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Platform Engineering in 2025"* but Heather's rewrite definitely makes more sense. I covered this epic womanel from Paula Kennedy, Leena Mooneeram, Shweta Vohra and Nicki Watt on the near future of #PlatformEngineering for The New Stack Learn from their answers, via me: ✓ What problems is platform engineering trying to solve? ✓ How does a platform team measure its success? #DeveloperProductivity ✓ What does ‘Platform as a Product’ even mean? ✓ What Is the future state of platform engineering technology? ✓ Where are the people and processes in these platforms? *Because Amanda Brock brilliantly played Stephen Fry's narration of this British classic in the bathrooms at #SOOCon25 https://lnkd.in/enPiRXZE

'Is Platform Engineering falling into the Trough of Disillusionment?' Jennifer Riggins asks in The New Stack. The answer is: Yes. Take a look at last year's Hype Cycle for Software Engineering. Platform Engineering is right on the precipice. It has only one way to go: down. This is for all the reasons which Jennifer mentioned in her article: https://lnkd.in/e4bXhc5m - A lack of clear business goal measurement. "Can you help me show the ROI of platform engineering" is a common question from Gartner clients. This is why we created a tool to calculate the ROI of platform engineering investments https://lnkd.in/eXvdS7vY, developed by Tigran Egiazarov, Manjunath (Manju) Bhat, and Bill Blosen - "Build your own" remains common. As Paula Kennedy from Syntasso says in the article, "Engineers are always going to engineer". This makes standardization difficult, so when engineers move to a new organization, there is the cognitive load of a different platform. Or, indeed, they may decide to build a platform like what their previous employer had: another example of "build your own". - Uptake is hard. At Gartner, we also hear clients ask "how can we encourage our developers to use the platform we built for them". It's easy to fall into the trap of *measuring the uptake metrics* rather than measuring the business benefit. Interestingly, the same thing happens with AI coding assistants: organizations focus on the uptake metrics (e.g. number of code-completion suggestions accepted) rather than the business outcomes. Like any technology, platform engineering will eventually come out of the Trough, as organizations discover how to be successful. At Gartner we are here to help organizations with this journey, and it's great to see Jennifer Riggins, Paula Kennedy, and others push the conversation forward.