What Is Platform Ops?
Platform Ops is the team responsible for curating, maintaining, connecting, and securing the platform that provides Dev, DevOps, SecOps, and (to a lesser degree) NetOps teams with what they need to do their jobs.
A platform is a collection of technologies used by different engineering teams to perform various functions that all rely on computing power and the technology/software stack. In the era of cloud computing and cloud‑native applications, all teams rely on a platform that provides not only core computing, storage, and networking capabilities, but also tools for building and delivering applications.
As more and more technology moves to the cloud, Platform Ops is also closely involved in the provision of core functionalities like organization‑wide networking and organization‑wide security. (Note: This piggybacks on the rise of Kubernetes, where even more of the major functionalities are virtualized and delivered via API in an ephemeral infrastructure.)
APIs are key to the platform approach. Services and microservices in cloud environments use APIs as a universal communication layer. Formerly, APIs demarcated internal and external communication. With cloud computing and Kubernetes, internal applications now also communicate via APIs. When Platform Ops teams collaborate to create and execute on an intelligent API management and delivery strategy, they make the lives of all the other teams – Dev, DevOps, SecOps, NetOps – more secure and more productive.
F5 NGINX provides a suite of products that together form the core of what organizations need to create apps and APIs with performance, reliability, security, and scale. Learn more about Platform Ops by reading Why Every Company Needs Platform Ops on the NGINX blog.