Why running Kubernetes does not mean you have Platform Engineering
A cluster is infrastructure. A platform is an internal product with users, a contract and a lifecycle.
This article is sample content with the length and rhythm of a real piece.
The usual confusion is treating infrastructure as if it were a platform. A running cluster answers where software executes. A platform answers how a team gets there without asking permission or opening a ticket.
The difference shows in the contract. A platform states what it guarantees, what it does not, and who answers for each part.
The second symptom is ownership. If nobody can say no to a request, the platform becomes the sum of last quarter’s urgencies.
The test is simple: if the team that built it disappeared tomorrow, would it keep running and evolving? If the answer is no, there is no installed capability yet.
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DevOps vs Platform Engineering: where does an internal platform actually begin?
These are not successive trends. They are two layers of the same problem, and confusing them is expensive.
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