How to adopt platform engineering in 2025

The sheer amount of technologies today has created a massive boom in innovation, allowing organizations globally to create software in a variety of ways. While having numerous technologies to create software is advantageous, it also presents a challenge—managing the complexity of using so many tools and technologies.

Platform engineering is an emerging practice to help organizations streamline their tools and infrastructure into a single cohesive point, known as an internal developer portal(IDP). The goal is to consolidate technologies, knowledge and best practices to boost overall productivity for all teams in the IT organization.

Key benefits of platform engineering

Platform engineering significantly increases software production efficiency through:

• Curated technologies: A standard set of tools and technologies across the organization.
• Self-service capabilities: Enabling team members to access what they need when they need it.
• Security and trust: Delivering solutions with built-in security features and compliance based on organizational best practices.
• Platform team support: An internal team of platform engineers dedicated to maintaining and improving the platform.

By adopting platform engineering, organizations can overcome the complexity of today’s technology landscape, fostering innovation while ensuring stability and scalability.

Are organizations adopting platform engineering?

According to feedback from attendees at the OpenShift Commons Gathering in Salt Lake City, most have already applied platform engineering practices in their organizations, as shown by the yellow portion of the chart. A smaller group, represented by green, identified themselves as subject matter experts (SMEs) in platform engineering. Meanwhile, only a small fraction, indicated by the red, pink, and blue sections, reported that they are still working on understanding and translating these practices for their organizations.

Fig: Survey results showing platform engineering knowledge and experience

What’s the value of an internal developer portal?

Based on our survey given at OpenShift Commons Gathering, the majority of attendees reported that the term “internal developer portal” suggested “self-service.” Perhaps this is because the self-service capabilities of an internal developer portal empowers developers to independently manage their infrastructure needs and access tools, which accelerates development processes, reduces reliance on other teams, supports adherence to regulatory requirements and internal policies and enhances overall productivity.

Fig: Survey results showing what an internal developer portal means to attendees

The evolution of platform engineering with a self-service approach

So, is your organization considering adopting platform engineering and, if so, where should you start?

Integrating Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, and Red Hat Developer Hub supports the evolution of platform engineering by bringing the self-service approach to end users, increasing developer productivity. Self-service is key to enabling end users quickly and ensuring best practices are in place and to scale platform engineers’ skills across an organization. The following diagram highlights how Red Hat Developer Hub and Red Hat OpenShift can bring together diverse use cases to resolve the problems platform engineering aims to address, such as compliance, automation and optimizing scalability and performance.

Fig: Integrations between Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat OpenShift, including Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security as part of Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Self-service also brings application capabilities quickly from Red Hat OpenShift as an application platform for developers to accelerate the software development lifecycle. The following diagram shows the possibility of integrating different products to provide developers with the tools they need to innovate quickly with guardrails set up by an organization.

Fig: Integrations between Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat OpenShift, and other solutions such as Red Hat OpenShift AI

Let’s take a closer look at how each of these Red Hat technologies supports this self-service approach.

Red Hat Developer Hub

Red Hat Developer Hub is an innovative product designed to transform the way developers interact with cloud-native applications. As platform engineering becomes an integral part of modern software development, Red Hat Developer Hub stands out as a critical tool that bridges the gap between developers and operations, enabling collaboration and efficiency.

Red Hat Developer Hub is tailored to enhance the developer experience by offering robust self-service capabilities. It allows developers to create a new application from the ground up. With just a few clicks, Red Hat Developer Hub enables developers to generate source code, set up a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline and deploy applications following an organization’s SDLC. This streamlined process eliminates traditional bottlenecks and empowers developers to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure.

One standout feature of Red Hat Developer Hub is its comprehensive dashboard, often referred to as the “single pane of glass,” giving developers and platform engineers a unified view of their application’s lifecycle. This intuitive interface enables developers and platform engineers to monitor security aspects, performance metrics and other critical features without switching between multiple tools, providing a holistic view that not only enhances productivity but also helps maintain security and performance at the highest standards.

Platform engineering focuses on building and maintaining an internal platform that serves as a foundation for developers to build and deploy applications more effectively. Red Hat Developer Hub fits perfectly within this paradigm by providing a structured yet flexible environment for application development and deployment. It abstracts the complexities of managing underlying infrastructure while offering developers the tools they need to deliver high-quality software rapidly. By doing so, it aligns with the core principles of platform engineering, which aim to streamline workflows, enhance collaboration and accelerate delivery.

Red Hat Developer Hub is a game-changer for organizations looking to enhance their platform engineering capabilities. By enabling self-service application creation, offering a comprehensive single pane of glass UI and integrating easily into platform engineering practices, Red Hat Developer Hub empowers developers and platform engineers alike to innovate with confidence. As digital transformation continues to shape the tech landscape, tools like Red Hat Developer Hub will be pivotal in driving efficiency and success.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes

What management and security challenges are keeping you up at night? For example, are you wondering:

• Did I pick the right Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project/tool for my platform engineering team?
• What security gaps do I not even know about, ever since my subject matter expert (SME) took her new job?
• Are the DIY costs over-running my budget as we invest further time and effort into making all of the cloud-native tooling work together?

While you may have a deep understanding of Red Hat’s capabilities in Kubernetes with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus moves Kubernetes management and security capabilities to the forefront.

The key message is Red Hat, as your trusted partner, has been working in the cloud-native Kubernetes business for over a decade and has expertise across the entire stack. It’s what we do everyday with market leading software and capabilities that yield a true return on investment (ROI) for you.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management supports from Day 1 cluster lifecycle to Day 2 operations and capacity planning, workload delivery across development, stage and production and observability features that help administrators understand underutilization and namespaces where right-sizing could occur.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes

A critical component of platform engineering is providing greater security assurance at every layer, where Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security plays a pivotal role. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security integrates efficiently into Kubernetes environments, providing robust security features such as vulnerability management, runtime threat detection and compliance coverage.

Teams need more intuitive and scalable configurations, enhanced training resources and clearer best practices. These processes are seen as vital for addressing knowledge gaps, simplifying implementation and successfully operationalizing modern security practices.

Fig: Survey results showing organizations’ maturity level in vulnerability management program

Another challenge that organizations face is security checks often occurring too late in the development process, resulting in delays that disrupt product release timelines. Organizations recognize the need to integrate security earlier in the development pipeline to identify vulnerabilities sooner and minimize costly delays. Ensuring the integrity of builds, managing vulnerabilities in container images and enforcing security policies at every deployment stage are critical tasks that can be effectively managed within a well-designed platform.

By embedding Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security into the CI/CD workflow, organizations can significantly reduce security risks without adding friction to the development process. This integration accelerates delivery and ensures that applications remain security-hardened and compliant throughout their lifecycle, making Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security an essential part of platform engineering for modern security-focused enterprises.

Learn more about how Red Hat can help you adopt platform engineering for your organization to support the complexities of today’s technology landscape.

Next steps

• Watch the demo: Self-service provisioning with Red Hat Developer Hub
• Read the blog: The State of Platform Engineering in the Age of AI