Platform Engineering - NetApp Instaclustr: Open source is the secret sauce
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Anil Inamdar in his capacity as global head of data Services at NetApp Instaclustr – the company provides a managed platform around open source data technologies including Cassandra, Kafka, Postgres, ClickHouse and OpenSearch.
Inamdar has 20+ years of experience in data and analytics roles. Joining Instaclustr in 2019, he works with organizations to drive data-centric digital transformations via the right cultural, operational, architectural and technological roadmaps.
Before Instaclustr, he held data & analytics leadership roles at Dell EMC, Accenture and Visa. Anil lives and works in the San Francisco (not Bridgwater) Bay Area.
Inamdar writes in full as follows…
Platform engineering teams waste too much time solving problems that have already been solved and the right open source projects can efficiently and cost-effectively deliver the building blocks for internal developer platforms that work and last. I’m not talking about the watered-down “open core” versions that vendors peddle like knock-off handbags, but genuine open source technologies with transparent governance and active communities.
The advantage is pretty straightforward.
Platform engineers build IDPs to give developers self-service access to standardised tools and workflows.
Open source communities have spent decades refining exactly these tools. When you combine the two, you get platforms that developers actually want to use (and, spoiler, most developers will end up using what they want to use anyway).
Start where it hurts
This is going to hurt, but it’s worth it I promise.
The best platform engineering initiatives begin by focusing on specific developer pain points. Open source enables rapid experimentation without vendor contracts or licensing negotiations. Pick a problem, test a solution, prove the value, then expand. Developers find their own solutions when official platforms move too slowly. Open source keeps platform teams agile enough to stay ahead of shadow IT. Quick wins help build trust and adoption.
Say a dev team needs a new database. Without platform engineering, they face weeks of setup, security configuration and reliability engineering. But with a good internal platform, they click a button and get a production-ready database in minutes.
Make that database open source PostgreSQL or Apache Cassandra 5.0 and the advantages compound. The community has already solved the hard problems around performance, high availability and disaster recovery.
Platform teams transform these proven patterns into push-button services. Every dev team in the organisation benefits from work done by thousands of engineers worldwide.
Golden paths need flexibility
Platform engineering promises golden paths that guide developers toward best practices. The danger lies in these paths becoming rigid corridors that feel more like cattle chutes. But open source prevents this trap!
When teams need to deviate from the standard path, open source allows customisation without breaking the entire platform. A team requiring specific database configurations can modify that PostgreSQL deployment while still benefiting from platform-provided security and monitoring. Proprietary platforms often force binary choices between the blessed path or going completely rogue. Open source enables graduated flexibility that keeps teams productive while maintaining standards. It’s the difference between guardrails and prison walls.
Anyone declaring DevOps dead hasn’t been paying attention. Platform engineering doesn’t kill DevOps, but rather gives DevOps teams better tools to do their jobs. The cultural shift toward collaboration between development and operations remains essential. What changes, though, is the mechanics.
NetApp Instaclustr’s Inamdar: Anyone declaring DevOps dead hasn’t been paying attention.
DevOps teams previously spent excessive time on infrastructure provisioning and config management. Platform engineering with open source automates these tasks through self-service platforms. DevOps folks can focus on improving deployment pipelines, monitoring strategies and incident response instead of wrestling with infrastructure setup. The philosophy stays the same, but the execution gets dramatically better.
Beyond the technical advantages, open source within platform engineering strategies transforms how organizations attract and retain talent. Top engineers want to work with open source. They know these skills transfer between companies. They trust technologies with transparent development processes. Smart organizations use this reality like a recruiting advantage.
Building deep expertise in complex open source systems takes time and specialized knowledge and organizations face a choice. They can develop this expertise internally or partner with specialists who live and breathe these technologies. Both approaches work, but the key is having open source in your stack. It attracts talent like a well-stocked kitchen attracts chefs.
Portability drives productivity
Developers need consistent experiences whether they deploy to AWS, on-premises data centers, or edge locations. Open source runs anywhere. No vendor tells you which clouds you can use or how to configure your systems. Customization goes beyond deployment options and teams can modify open source tools to match their exact needs. Proprietary platforms force you into their platform engineering worldview, while open source adapts to yours.
Enterprise security teams sleep better with open source. Thousands of experts examine the code and vulnerabilities get found and fixed faster than most vendors’ private security teams could manage. Platform engineering amplifies these benefits by baking that security into the foundation. Every application deployed through the platform inherits enterprise-grade security by default. Developers get secure systems without becoming security experts themselves. They can focus on building features while the platform handles the paranoia.
The metric that matters
How much time do your developers spend on infrastructure versus features?
Good platform engineering with open source can flip the ratio from 70/30 overhead to 30/70 value creation. Developers stop reinventing wheels and start building products. Platform engineering succeeds when developers forget about infrastructure. Open source provides the proven components to make that happen. The combination multiplies impact across talent acquisition, deployment flexibility, security posture and developer productivity.
Platform engineering teams who embrace genuine open source build better platforms faster. Their developers ship more features. Their organisations move faster. In a world where developer productivity determines business success, that advantage compounds quickly.
