Platform Weekly #51 - Thoughtworks Gets It

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Thoughtworks gets it

I’ve been following Thoughtworks for a while now. They were some of the very first players in the software engineering world to define what later became Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs). They were also speaking about the importance of a platform team working as a product team, i.e. one of my favorite topics, Platform as a Product .

What makes them even cooler? Thoughtworks were doing this back in 2017 . A time when most people weren’t even thinking about building platforms yet, and were still trying to figure out how to do DevOps at enterprise scale AND on top of complex cloud native setups (hint, they didn’t figure it out).

So I wasn’t surprised — though still impressed — when a couple weeks back they officially recognized platform orchestration as a fundamental part of platform engineering and added platform orchestration to their technology radar .

Why should I care, you ask? If you’re serious about implementing platform engineering and building IDPs (which if you are reading this I’m assuming you are), you can’t ignore platform orchestration. A Platform Orchestrator is the core configuration engine at the heart of any enterprise-grade IDP. It’s what allows you to standardize both app and infra configs, as well as all workflows. It’s also what lets you enforce clear RBAC and compliance alongside your apps’ lifecycle. In short, it’s what makes your platform truly enterprise-ready.

Think of a Platform Orchestrator as the glue of your cloud native toolchain. It integrates with your CI pipeline, your developer portal, your resources and observability tools, and more.

The cloud native and platform engineering landscape is constantly evolving and it’s great to see seasoned players like Thoughtworks leading the pack once more.