Tom De Wolf, Architect & Innovation Lead at ACA Group, delivered an enlightening talk at PlatformCon 2024, the world’s largest platform engineering event. With over 150 speakers selected from more than 800 submissions and an impressive attendance of 30,000 virtual participants, PlatformCon continues to set the bar high for industry knowledge sharing.

In his talk, Tom dove deep into the topic "Raise the Level of Abstraction: Engineering a Platform Using Kubernetes Operators". He highlighted how Kubernetes operators and Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) can significantly lower the cognitive load on developers by creating higher-level abstractions in the Platform Orchestrator. This approach not only supports the creation of microservices for application development, but also facilitates the development of data products within a data mesh.

The focus of the session was on empowering developers by abstracting away the accidental complexity of underlying infrastructure and technology. This "shift-left" strategy allows developers to work more autonomously, ultimately enabling them to deliver more value.

Key takeaways

Key takeaways from the talk included:

• How to engineer and design platforms using cloud-native technologies and Kubernetes.
• Utilizing Kubernetes Operators and CRDs to define fit-for-purpose abstractions.
• Example patterns for designing a Platform Orchestrator for your platform.
• Practical application for microservices within software engineering and data products within a data mesh.

Did you miss the live session? No worries! You can watch the full take in the video below!