The Platform Players

Platforms

So far, the solutions we’ve seen need some assembly, meaning we can adopt them incrementally and defer commitment. Optionality comes at a cost, though, because we’ll end up devoting time and resources plumbing together different parts. For example, a basic yet frustrating aspect of rolling our own platform is getting all the authentication and role-based authorization systems working together. Another common stumbling block is integrating the components’ monitoring to provide a unified view.

Role of platforms

At the other end of the integration spectrum, we have the platform players. The platform is to the data center what the operating system is to the personal computer. It abstracts the underlying infrastructure and presents a friendlier programming model. It manages ...