Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era.

Platform Engineering

i actually think that "build vs buy" is besides the point. building a platform is complex - regardless of the technology choice or using an orchestrator or just the APIs for all platform tools. Vendors always prefer the "buy" - but for our customers the questions are bigger and deeper. How to build the right platform and change engineering delivery over time, how to succeed in driving developer adoption etc.

Most “buy” decisions are actually “buy then build,” as customizations and integrations come into play. Nothing is ever exactly right out of the box. So just assume “buy then build” and spend your time asking “what do I need to build?” And “how much capacity do I have to customize?”

A former CTO colleague of mine had a rule, he wouldn’t buy unless the build was 5% or less. I think everyone has to find that threshold for their organization. 