Hype to Reality: Platform engineering wins in 2024

2024 was a big year for platform engineering. It has now been more than two years since platform engineering first appeared on a Gartner hype cycle, and that infamous article “DevOps is dead” first catapulted platform engineering into the limelight. 2024 was a crucial year for platform engineering, as the fervor dissipated, and we looked around to see if the hype materialized into reality or had platform engineering like so many other software engineer fads faded into dust?

The answer won’t surprise you. Especially considering you’re on this blog. Platform engineering is bigger than ever. From meteoric growth in this community, and its annual event PlatformCon, to the institutionalization of platform engineering across every major analyst and conference in the space, 2024 proved platform engineering is here to stay.

Let’s dive into everything that happened.

Platform engineering community in 2024

PlatformCon might be the first thing that comes to mind when considering our platform engineering community events. It’s understandable why. PlatformCon 2024 was the world’s largest platform engineering event, with over 35,000 people flowing through it live during the week, and more than 150,000 views on YouTube in the months to follow.

Alongside the impressive numbers, the community introduced a variety of new formats, including a full day dedicated to hands-on workshops, and an 8+ hour live stream of panel discussions hosted by media partners like DevOps.com, TNS, and DZone.

Couple that with the first-ever PlatformCon Live day in London that saw over 300 platform engineers meet together live to talk all things platform engineering, it’s no surprise that when we think of the community, we think of PlatformCon. However, there was a lot more this year than that big splash.

In 2024, the platform engineering community hosted 87 webinars with over 6,000 people attending live (and tens of thousands more watching later on YouTube). These weekly webinars featured topics covering the full scope of platform engineering from community ambassador Krzysztof Hałasa’s, 5 biggest Platform Manager fuckups to Jonas Hecht from Codecentrics technical breakdown of a multi-cloud Internal Developer Platform using Crossplane and ArgoCD.

We also hosted 11 roundtables with platform engineering leads on 2 continents and led 14 workshops for over 4,000 people on topics like Infrastructure Platform Engineering and Minimum Viable Platforms (MVPs).

2024 continued the trend of ever-increasing growth in the community on all fronts.

It’s not just all about numbers, however. From our weekly webinars to PlatformCon, the quality of learning was on a whole new level. With the awesome folks at Sicredi highlighting their incredible Internal Developer Platform that runs 4000 microservices to serve 8 million customers, and the fireside chat between Kaspar von Grünberg and Kelsey Hightower with its unforgettable quote, “silos are fantastic” (and its heated Q&A)

PlatformCon alone contained over 80+ hours of platform engineering content. It once again cemented itself as the #1 spot not just to better understand the discipline and learn, but also as the best way to get your finger on the pulse of what the world of platform engineering currently looks like (and what it may hold in the future. There is a reason why our article 7 takeaways from PlatformCon 2024 works so perfectly as a summary, not just of the event, but of the industry at large. 

Hype Cycles

Just two years after its first mention, platform engineering significantly impacted Gartner's radar in 2024. Initially recognized as an emerging trend in two Hype Cycles in 2022 and 2023, it has now expanded its presence across 10 different Hype Cycles this year and even earned its own dedicated Hype Cycle for Platform Engineering:

At the same time, the new subdiscipline infrastructure platform engineering appeared on 8 Hype Cycles across Cloud Computing, SRE, Infrastructure, and Operations or I&O Automation.

Platform engineering certification and training

As platform engineering continues to grow, the community has evolved to meet the ever-increasing demand for learning and collaboration. This year, the Platform Engineering community introduced three major initiatives designed to meet this growing demand for learning: The first official platform engineering certification track, and specialized trainings designed to help businesses of all sizes. These efforts aim to address challenges that have hindered other engineering trends like DevOps and GitOps, while simultaneously providing more opportunities for the community to collaborate and thrive.

The certification track begins with a fundamentals course diving into core concepts like Platform as a Product, platform maturity, golden paths, the relationship between platform engineering and DevOps, Infrastructure Platform Engineering, and strategies for initiating and advocating for platform engineering initiatives. It then progresses to an advanced course focused on designing, building, and promoting your first Minimum Viable Platform (MVP), including internal marketing techniques to gain buy-in and funding for evolving the MVP into a fully developed Internal Developer Platform. This then closes off with a certification exam designed to validate this learning and demonstrate the awesome ever-growing number of platform masters around us.

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Platform engineering isn’t just about the individual though. It doesn’t matter how advanced you might be if your team or organization are far behind. Fortunately, the community's ecosystem of training and education has grown to meet the challenge. By connecting platform engineering experts with organizations seeking to deepen their understanding and expertise, the community training services have successfully helped organizations of all sizes, geographies, and platform maturity build, launch (or save) platform initiatives effectively while supporting the spread of best practices.

Platform engineering ambassador program

This year also came with one of the most exciting, and likely the most impactful additions to the growing basket of awesome initiatives. The Community launched the Platform Engineering Community Ambassador Program. As a community within the community, it helps to connect leading platform engineering experts to discuss best practices and frameworks and to learn from each other. The Ambassador program is a fantastic way to bring together experts and help them gain recognition, and new experiences to better contribute even more to the community. 

Platform engineering in 2025

With such an incredible, jam-packed year, it’s hard to imagine that 2025 could be any bigger or more impactful. We are certainly going to try. PlatformCon 2025 is already looking like it will be larger than ever. By tripling down on in-person with Live Days in both NYC, LDN, and Paris, it will feature not one, but two (and maybe more) full live in-person days dedicated to bringing the community together for hands-on workshops, training, and networking than ever before.

At the same time, our amazing influx of 2025 platform engineering community ambassadors will lead even more webinars, more workshops, and more awesome articles on the community blog.

The first certified platform engineers will make their mark on the industry, and our courses will continue to expand to meet the growing demands of discipline from deep dives into every aspect of the platform tooling landscape.

Most of all, we will continue to deliver the absolute best we can to support this incredible discipline - we can’t wait to do it with you.