If you’re a developer, DevOps engineer, or security technician, you know the feeling of managing multiple tools at once. It’s a phenomenon so prevalent in software development that it has its own name, “tool sprawl,” and it can make it hard for teams to do their jobs efficiently.

If DevOps is an approach to software development that emphasizes collaboration between Development and Operations teams, then Platform Engineering operationalizes that approach by creating a centralized platform that has specific sets of tools and processes. It’s the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in a cloud-native era.