Posted on April 11, 2023 by Josh Gavant + Abby Bangser

Community post by Josh Gavant and Abby Bangser, CNCF’s Platforms WG

CNCF’s Platforms working group (WG) is pleased to announce the first release of a whitepaper to provide guidance and clarity on the nature and benefits of platforms for cloud-native computing. Download it now as a PDF or view it on our website.

Thank you to our many contributors listed below for their ongoing input and insights!

We prepared this paper because we’ve learned that platforms enable organizations to fully realize the promises of cloud computing. Platforms accelerate application and service delivery by enabling rapid integration of infrastructure and application components. They are a step in the ongoing evolution of enterprise IT, providing core capabilities consistently to enable DevOps-style efficiency and autonomy across an organization.

The objective of this paper is to educate and advise organizational leaders and would-be platform builders by describing the values internal platforms offer, the problems they solve, methods to track their success and attributes and capabilities they require. It presents how today’s CNCF projects fit together as the foundation of complete platform initiatives. Finally, it provides guidance on how to enable platform teams to succeed, how to measure their progress, and some challenges to prepare them for.

WG Platforms and TAG App Delivery are building on this foundation to provide more guidance and reduce complexity for cloud application builders and CNCF project maintainers. Join us via the links below as we expand guidance on practices like integrating a product mindset in platform teams and applying standard governance policies; and as we pursue conventions for capabilities like secrets management, artifact storage, web portals and API frameworks, all potential parts of a complete platform:

Outline of product and application teams and capability and service providers

Last but not least, this version of this paper will not be the last! Please inform future iterations by responding to our survey (to be shared soon!) and sharing your platform stories with us in CNCF groups and meetups. Hope to talk to you soon!

Thank you to our contributors!

As we reach this milestone we want to thank members of CNCF’s WG Platforms for all their contributions and feedback, particularly the following:

Resources