Since the first Internal Developer Platform (IDP) reference architecture launched at PlatformCon 2023, it has become the industry benchmark for platform engineering. As AI reshapes the Software Development Life Cycle, this updated edition distills new insights from hundreds of enterprises and practitioners to define the next evolution of platform architectures, real-world, data-driven, and ready for the age of intelligent automation.

Kubernetes has become the foundation of modern platform engineering, but its rapid adoption has introduced massive operational complexity. This whitepaper explores how platform teams can master Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management through automation, declarative control, and a Platform-as-a-Product mindset to transform sprawling fleets into resilient, scalable, and cost-efficient systems.

Observability has become a strategic pillar of modern platform engineering. As systems grow increasingly distributed and complex, the ability to truly understand what’s happening across your platform, beyond simple monitoring, has become essential for reliability, developer experience, and innovation.

In the last year, Platform engineering has evolved from being one of the hottest trends in DevOps and Infrastructure, to a staple of the software engineering universe. This report examines how it got there, what has changed and where it is going.

Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) for Platform Engineers are gaining significant traction as platform engineering teams recognize their importance in how they address long-standing pain points in developer productivity, experience, and security.

See the reference architecture of the Internal Developer Platform on AWS. This IDP streamlines development, boosts DevEx, and enhances Ops efficiency with automation and cloud-native tech.

With platform engineering taking the world by storm, it is crucial to understand the details, and implementation of one of it's foundational concepts - Platform as a Product.