The Software Architects' Newsletter July 2024

[InfoQ Live Logo] The Software Architects' Newsletter July 2024 [View in browser]( Welcome to the InfoQ Software Architects’ Newsletter! Each month, we bring you essential news and experience on emerging patterns and technologies from industry peers. This month, we focus on "Platform Engineering: Exploring the overlap between software architecture and platform building." Roles, patterns, and practices from this topic span the entire "diffusion of innovation" graphs in our April 2024 reports: [InfoQ Software Architecture and Design Trends Report]( and [InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report](. Implementing cell-based architecture requires a supporting platform. Designing a socio-technical architecture for software applications is much the same as for platforms. Cultivating a value mindset and focusing on business agility are vital for platform building. Key challenges remain, including how much platform to build upfront (the "thinnest viable platform"), how to lead platform engineering and developer experience teams, and how to avoid getting caught in a technology-focused build trap. News How Building a Platform as a Product Empowered Software Engineers Platform engineering is about [accelerating and empowering developers]( to deliver more product value faster. According to [Jessica Andersson](, most companies don’t invest in platform engineering until they reach a specific size. At QCon London, she presented how their startup adopted platform engineering, their strategy, and what they have done to gain platform adoption from developers. QCon London: A Tale of Team Topologies at m3ter At QCon London 2024, [Ricardo Nuno Almeida]( spoke about [adapting Team Topologies at m3ter](, which helps B2B software scale-ups manage complex pricing by automating bill calculation. Adaptability proved crucial to success and ran through m3ter’s journey of evolving team topologies to meet growth demands and changing priorities. Slack Optimizes Internal Development and Cost Efficiency with EKS and Karpenter Slack recently disclosed the architecture of its [internal compute orchestration platform](, epitomized by "Bedrock," which is based on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Karpenter. The Bedrock platform, encapsulated within a single YAML file, streamlines container deployment and management, simplifying the deployments for Slack’s internal developers. Leveraging tools like Jenkins, FQDN service discovery, and the Nebula overlay network, Bedrock ensures efficient operations. Over 80% of Slack applications now operate seamlessly on this innovative framework, resulting in enhanced testing precision and refined infrastructure management. Platforms, People, and Process for Great Developer Experience In this InfoQ podcast, [Shane Hastie]( spoke with [Daniel Bryant]( about [engineering culture and developer experience](. Key takeaways included: Wherever you work in the organization, you are trying to sustainably deliver business value; the gap between the ideal experiment hypothesis and running in an observable way in production is developer experience; and the more context you have across the whole organization, the better the software you will deliver. QCon London: Curating a Developer Experience In a talk at QCon London 2024 titled "[Curating the Developer Experience](," [Andy Burgin]( discussed embracing Developer Experience (DevEx) as an operational philosophy at the betting company Flutter Entertainment. Recognizing the potential of DevEx to enhance productivity and foster collaboration and empathy between teams, Burgin explained how the container platform squad implemented and evolved their Developer Experience over several years. Sponsored [Designing Data Intensive Applications (By O'Reilly) - Sponsored by ScyllaDB]( [Designing Data Intensive Applications (By O'Reilly)]( In these three selected chapters from his book, Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate the fast-changing landscape of approaches to processing and storing data for data-intensive applications. Understand the distributed systems research upon which modern databases are built, learn from the data architectures of major online services, and more. Download the three chapters from “[Designing Data-Intensive Applications](,” sponsored by ScyllaDB Case Study Platform as a Runtime - the Next Step in Platform Engineering At QCon London, [Aviran Mordo](, VP of Engineering at Wix, shared that developing a [Platform as a Runtime (PaaR)]( solution is a substantial undertaking best suited for organizations facing significant scaling challenges. If your microservice environment is relatively small, with fewer than 100 services, alternative, more cost-effective solutions for scaling might be preferable. You can start by enforcing standard libraries, maintaining rigid control over third-party dependencies, and building rules to enforce standards. The Wix team built a "generally available" (GA) enforcer that would force everyone to deploy their artifacts to production with the latest libraries and frameworks at least once every two weeks. An important lesson the Wix team learned is that they needed the platform team to be in the right mindset. They had to have a Value-Driven platform team. While this can be its own topic, a pivotal discovery was made: the most crucial KPI for the platform team is "developer adoption." If developers aren’t using your platform, it might not be delivering real or enough value. This kind of thinking was critical to the team. Collaborating with product developers is very helpful in adopting the platform since product developers are always involved in defining the platform features and capabilities and setting requirements that solve their real problems. The path to achieving these goals was not easy. Aside from the technological challenges, there is also the human factor. Developers can be apprehensive of abstractions and unseen functionalities. To win the hearts and minds of developers, consistent communication about progress and ongoing education regarding the platform’s inner workings are vital. This transparency demystifies the "magic" and empowers developers to debug and contribute effectively. This content is an excerpt from a recent InfoQ article by Aviran Mordo, "[Platform as a Runtime - the Next Step in Platform Engineering](." To get notifications when InfoQ publishes content on these topics, follow "[Platform Engineering](," "[DevOps](," and "[Team Collaboration](" on InfoQ. Missed a newsletter? You can find all of the [previous issues]( on InfoQ. Sponsored [Advancing Java: Harnessing AI, Cloud Technology, and Community Collaboration - Sponsored by Microsoft Azure]( [Advancing Java: Harnessing AI, Cloud Technology, and Community Collaboration]( In this JDConf2024 keynote, Julia Liuson examines the link between Java coding, cloud technology, and AI. She highlights how Microsoft supports Java developers with AI and GitHub Copilot, streamlining app dev across cloud platforms, and covers Microsoft's numerous partnerships in the Java ecosystem. Watch Now On-Demand “[Advancing Java: Harnessing AI, Cloud Technology, and Community Collaboration - the JDConf2024 Keynote](,” sponsored by Microsoft Azure Upcoming Events InfoQ and QCon: For practitioners, by practitioners [InfoQ Dev Summit Munich (Sept 26-27)]( Learn how senior software developers are navigating critical topics including Generative AI, Large Language Models, security, Serverless Architecture, modern web applications, DevSecOps and more. Save up to 60% with our Summer Sale. [Register before August 13 to save](. [QCon San Francisco 2024 (Nov 18-22)]( All 12 tracks, early talks and speakers have been announced for QCon San Francisco (Nov 18-22). Level up with early adopter companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Uber and more. [See the speakers](. [QCon London 2025 (Apr 7-9)]( QCon London will return to the QEII April 7-9, 2025. Register before August 25 to secure our special launch pricing. Teams of 10+ can get our biggest team saving today. [Register](. About InfoQ Senior software developers rely on the InfoQ community to keep ahead of the adoption curve. One of the main reasons software architects and engineers tell us they keep coming back to InfoQ is because they trust the information provided and selected by their peers. We’ve been helping software development teams adopt new technologies and practices for over 15 years through InfoQ articles, news items, podcasts, tech talks, trends reports, and QCon software development conferences. We hope you find this newsletter useful. If not, you can unsubscribe using the link below. [Unsubscribe]( Forwarded email? Subscribe and get your own copy. 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