There’s no doubt that 2024 has been a breakthrough year for platform engineering. It’s such a big thing that even Puppet’s 2024 State of DevOps report has completely pivoted to platform engineering, with it being the focus for two years now. 

Yet, misconceptions abound about what platform engineering is and where it’s headed. For example, many still hold the belief that platform engineering is just an advanced version of DevOps. But it’s really the codification of DevOps practices into software (i.e., internal developer platform) to allow developers greater efficiency, productivity and the many other benefits of DevOps.

That said, allow me to shed some light on the latest (and notable) data points on platform engineering.

1. 82% believe platform engineering is a function, not a job title

This stat comes from the new Voice of Kubernetes Experts Report 2024 by Portworx. This is interesting because it suggests that many organisations see platform engineering as a wide range of responsibilities that go beyond a single role. This reflects what Humanitec found in their report, which is that people with “platform” in their title remain in the minority (approximately 30%), primarily because platform engineering is still new and does not have defined roles.

2. Productivity (e.g., speed, scalability) is the top reason for adopting platform engineering

The same Portworx report found that 56% of respondents agreed that scalability and flexibility were the reasons for adopting platform engineering. This is followed by the need to drive cost efficiency (49%) and improve security posture (43%). This is echoed by the Puppet report as well, with 58% of respondents confirming that their top goal is productivity.

3. Most organisations have had a platform team for more than three years

An eye-opening 10% of respondents from the Puppet report said they’ve had a platform team for 10 years or more. 25% said they’ve had it for six to nine. And 43% acknowledged that they’ve had a team for three to five years. It’s likely that the 10% come from software companies with massive engineering organisations, like Spotify, who built Backstage out of necessity.

4. 70% of developers spend an average of three to four hours on non-core work daily due to a lack of platform engineering

This is a pretty shocking statistic from Port’s 2024 State of Internal Developer Portals report. That’s half of a workday, every day, which explains the urgency and enthusiasm that we’re seeing in the industry for automation, DevEx, and platform engineering in general.

5. Only 34% of organisations use an IDP to drive engineering quality and compliance

More insights from the Port report show that only a minority of developers are using an IDP to drive standards and compliance. 46% of the study’s 100 respondents said they used documentation for this purpose. And 19% answered manual checklists. 

6. 57% of organisations take weeks on average to deploy software to production

Another data point from Port indicates that there’s much to be done in terms of automation, testing, and streamlining processes. What’s interesting is that 11% of respondents said it takes them several months, while only 1% said they can deploy in hours.

7. Most teams built their IDPs from open-source tools

Circling back, the Humanitec report mentioned above, State of Platform Engineering Report Volume 2, found that 41.18% of organisations have built their IDPs mainly from open-source tools. 38.24% reported using a mix of open-source and commercial tools. This roughly tracks Port’s numbers as well, which is that 25% of its respondents reported using Backstage, and 17% used a portal based on a commercial product.

8. Platform engineers make 42.5% more than DevOps engineers in the US

One more interesting stat from Humanitec. In the US, platform engineers are making $219,078 on average compared to their DevOps counterparts at $153,639. In Europe, there’s still a gap, though not as big, at $100,987 for platform engineers vs. $85,116 for DevOps. This might be because of the wider skillset that platform engineers have or because there’s simply more demand for platform engineering at the moment.

9. 48% of platform engineers are still not using AI in their work

The Humanitec report outlined potential use cases for LLMs, many of which will be hard to implement without significant expertise in LLMs. Yet, the report found that 14.42% of platform engineers do not plan to use AI, while 33.65% do not but want to. Only 4.81% said they use AI a lot. 

10. The first platform engineering maturity model was released in 2023

The model was developed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) Platforms Working Group. It rates an organisation on five aspects, with four levels of maturity:

• Investment: How are staff and funds allocated?
• Adoption: Why and how do users discover and use internal platforms and capabilities?
• Interfaces: How do users interact with and consume platform capabilities?
• Operations: How are platforms and their capabilities planned and maintained?
• Measurement: What is the process for gathering and incorporating feedback?

As with many of these maturity models, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach and striving for the highest maturity levels across all aspects should not be the goal. Instead, we should view it as a rough roadmap in which to make improvements to the way we develop applications.

What to make of all this? Overall, I’m optimistic. But despite platform engineering not being a new thing, there’s no denying that it is very much in its infancy. I’m personally excited to see what comes out of the adoption of open-sourced tools in the building of IDPs, the use of alternative cloud providers, and the laser focus on developer experiences.