Survey reveals businesses are running multiple cloud-native platforms: Explore the opportunities and complexities of this approach

Variety is the spice of life, as the familiar adage goes – but when it comes to delivering enterprise-grade software, too much variety, in the form of separate tech stacks, tools, and approaches, breeds complexity and risk. And things can heat up quickly.

Delivering high-quality applications predictability and securely is far simpler when you cut back on variety for variety’s sake. Application platforms can do just that, inject standardization and repeatability into the app development and delivery process. Standardization makes it simpler for developers to get their code to production faster and consistency leads to far more efficient operations, giving teams time to work on higher-value tasks. When revenue, business growth, and customer loyalty depend on timely software delivery, predictability is a good thing.

Implementing a cloud-native application platform that meets the needs of hundreds or thousands of applications across many application teams is a significant endeavor. To help IT leaders gain an understanding of trends, benchmarks, and opportunities surrounding app platforms, the Tanzu division of Broadcom, conducted its annual State of Cloud Native Application Platforms report. The survey of 760 IT leaders and engineers at organizations with more than 1,000 employees explores key challenges and landscape changes that offer perspective to IT leaders as they pursue their own cloud-native app and platform strategies.

Delivering value by empowering the business

An interesting and encouraging result from the survey is that a significant 40% of respondents now view cloud native as a mindset rather than just a technology. This shift in perspective underscores the importance of fostering agile and innovative thinking within organizations, rather than merely focusing on technology adoption. Businesses and IT leaders are now looking beyond just cost savings and efficiency gains when it comes to adopting cloud-native practices, positioning them to more fully embrace the potential of cloud-native practices to drive real business value.

Specifically, the survey shows that almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents report seeing at least one direct financial benefit of cloud-native, underscoring its expansion beyond technical benefits. For example, 26% reported that new revenue-driving customer experiences have been created, an increase of five percentage points since last year.

Many platforms? Consistency matters

Many large organizations have deployed multiple application platforms. The survey shows that the more platforms that run, the more challenges that can arise. Nearly three-quarters (72%) work for organizations that have deployed multiple cloud-native platforms, with 46% managing three or more.

In tandem, and almost without exception, challenges mount as enterprises increase from one to two to three to four or more platforms. This underscores that introducing too much variety, even in the form of platforms themselves, leads to added complexity and challenges in areas that could make or break a business. For example, 74% of respondents using four or more platforms said meeting security and compliance requirements is a challenge compared to 53% who use 3 platforms.

And while cloud-native technology is squarely in the mainstream, that does not mean that cloud-native standardization has been widely adopted – regardless of the number of app platforms an organization uses. Many organizations struggle with repeatability and scale because of inconsistent approaches to app development and deployment: 68% of respondents indicate that their cloud-native technology is inconsistently implemented.

Security concerns are paramount

A symptom of using multiple app platforms and inconsistent approaches to development and delivery, meeting security and governance requirements (55%), and applying governance across distributed apps (46%) are the top challenges when creating or adopting a cloud-native application platform. In addition, one-third of business decision-makers are concerned about the ability to implement governance at scale, highlighting the growing importance of compliance and governance.

The results highlight the urgent need for app platforms that create repeatable patterns and allow organizations to transcend the inherent complexity of cloud-native environments. Consistency and repeatability are critical to accelerate app deployment and the more apps and app developers an enterprise has; the more important consistency becomes. An app platform that offers a standardized, consistent experience reduces risk and improves security posture. VMware Tanzu Platform provides a simple developer experience and brings consistency and standardized automation to building containers, binding apps to services, deploying code, and scaling applications – regardless of the application runtime, whether Cloud Foundry or Kubernetes.

Similarly, combining cloud-native application platforms and modern disciplines like platform engineering and DevSecOps can deliver a flexible self-service model for developers that is curated and consistent. This approach can give platform teams and security leaders a repeatable and consistent path to production while ensuring faster delivery with less risk.

Platform engineering is critical to success

At its core, platform engineering is designed to mitigate the increased cognitive load that developers too often experience in the cloud-native technology landscape. Platform teams work to identify key development patterns across application teams and deliver those specific requirements on a consistent, systematic basis. This “platform-as-a-product” approach supports consistency and helps establish golden paths to production. It can help remove the siloed, DIY mentality that often underpins tool sprawl and process complexity and instead, creates greater overall software agility.

In short, platform engineering teams act as a conduit between developers, operations, and security teams, creating both an improved developer experience and greater infrastructure and operations efficiencies from a platform perspective.

However, the trick to successful platform engineering is a mindset change away from the technology itself and instead, towards understanding the wants and needs of the key developer and product team stakeholders. In an in-depth analysis of the growing urgency for effective platform engineering teams, Gartner suggests IT leaders approach this in three ways: ensuring the proper platform engineering principles are followed, treating the platform like a product (how will the platform need to evolve and adapt to shifting developer needs, and how can platform teams deliver that in a timely, efficient manner?), and clearly defining the responsibilities of the platform team from end-to-end.

In sum, the landscape is rapidly maturing. The cloud-native mindset is expanding, and the need for a unified experience is more pressing than ever. Platform teams are poised to unlock powerful new capabilities for IT organizations. With Tanzu Platform and the cloud-native expertise of VMware Tanzu Labs, platform teams can benefit from a decade of cloud-native best practices and insights, and boost operational efficiency by unifying golden commands across Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes to take the heat out of accelerated app delivery.

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