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I think it depends on what “Platform” means to you. It feels to me there’s different meaning for this ‘Platform’ in Platform Engineering right now. For e.g. I’m seeing Platform Engineering these days is more trending towards building an IDP (Internal Developer Platform) aimed at Developers to improve Developer Experience (DevEx) and increase productivity. However, I can also see there’s an area out there that sees ‘Platform’ referring to an application platform for the application itself that is for end users. This is where perhaps the more DevOps/SRE topics are in this area. But ultimately, Platform Engineering is the new buzzword in the tech industry & therefore is still very raw so I guess we are still in process of discovering the true definition for it..

Thank Colin, it way simpler, could you give any example of IDP?

Tanzu Application Platform is one example

The one, I like seems easier to grasp is, Platform should be focused on enabling other teams, providing the tools (Infrastructure + Services) to get their job done. They shouldn’t be in the business of doing everything for them. This sometimes becomes challenging as it requires a cultural change in the organization.

platform engineering = "dev tools group"

I tend to explain it this way: platform engineers write software for other software enginneers 😉

I wrote an overview of Platform Engineering here. It might help separate the concept of Platform Engineering from the concept of a platform team (Team Topologies). Platform Engineering is an example of a platform team (it's a subclass 😆). It has really become the go-to pattern for organizations who have high complexity ops hurting their dev teams.

I like the descriptions from Team Topologies and CNCF the most so far. Otherwise, as others have said, it's being used a lot so context comes into play a lot.

Platform team: a grouping of other team types that provide a compelling internal product to accelerate delivery by Stream-aligned teams

Stream-aligned team: aligned to a flow of work from (usually) a segment of the business domain

https://teamtopologies.com/key-concepts

Platform teams are responsible for the interfaces to and experiences with platform capabilities - like Web portals, custom APIs, and golden path templates. On one hand, platform teams work with those teams implementing infrastructure and supporting services to define consistent experiences; on the other, they work with product and user teams to gather feedback and ensure those experiences meet requirements.

https://tag-app-delivery.cncf.io/whitepapers/platforms/