Platform Engineering: Evolution, Trends, and Future Impact on Software Delivery

Platform Engineering is frequently hailed as the latest paradigm shift enabling developers to ship code faster - but is it simply a return to the pre-DevOps era of siloed teams focusing on narrow parts of the software lifecycle?

Over the last decade we've seen DevOps explode in popularity, only to be declared "dead". We've seen Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) emerge as a game-changer, to then be surpassed in popularity by Kubernetes and developers building their own internal platforms from scratch.

In this presentation, Paula will share her unique insights and experience from working in this domain for more than 12 years, with a focus on:

  • how platform engineering has evolved over the last decade and the impact this has had on the practice of writing code
  • the latest trends around inner sourcing and enabling developer teams to directly contribute components and capabilities into the internal platform
  • practical takeaways on evaluating internal platform maturity and leveraging internal platforms to deliver code that is faster, safer and easier to maintain

Speaker

Paula Kennedy

Cofounder & COO @Syntasso, Previously Senior Director Platform Services @VMware and @Pivotal, 20+ Years in the IT Industry

Paula is Cofounder & Chief Operating Officer of Syntasso; her previous roles include Senior Director at VMware Tanzu and Cofounder & Chief Operating Officer of CloudCredo.

With 20+ years experience in the IT industry, Paula champions community, diversity and inclusion and has spoken at many conferences including KubeCon and the LeadDev conference. She is a CNCF Ambassador, an OpenUK Ambassador as well as a Team Topologies Advocate. Paula is an organiser for KCD UK, DevOpsDays London, and Fast Flow Conference, as well as the London Platform User Group. In her spare time she enjoys walking her dog and attempting to run half-marathons.

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