One of the nascent trends in IT that is gaining traction is the rise of platform engineering. This centralized approach focuses on optimizing the application developer experience, striking a balance between the flexibility to use preferred tools or platforms and the need for more cost-effective, efficient application development and deployment.
The rise of MSPs in application development
Historically, managed service providers (MSPs) have not played a major role in application development. Application developers have traditionally preferred to choose their own tools and platforms. However, as the pressure to build software faster and more effectively increases, many are now realizing the value of relying on a centralized team to manage their development environments. After all, every minute that a developer spends configuring and maintaining a development environment is another minute they could be doing something, such as creating business logic, that adds real value to the organization.
Most organizations with centralized IT teams have adopted platform engineering. However, it’s only a matter of time before smaller organizations building custom software follow this trend. A turnkey managed platform engineering service will likely be of most interest to many of these organizations.
Of course, one of the great ironies of platform engineering is that many application developers embraced DevOps to get out from under centralized IT teams that were perceived as being too inflexible. Now they are seeking help from centralized IT teams to reduce the cognitive load. This support allows them to avoid the challenges of building, maintaining, and securing their own environments.
New opportunities for MSPs
Regardless of the motivation, one thing is clear: MSPs now have a new opportunity to expand into a high-margin service. This shift allows them to offer valuable solutions and grow their influence in the market. After all, if every organization is now a software company then the only way they can differentiate themselves is going to be by building and updating applications faster than their rivals. The challenge, naturally, will be getting application developers to stay committed to using a managed platform engineering service. Many of them at a moment’s notice could create their shadow IT environment but, as the saying goes, it’s becoming apparent to them that even though they can do something it doesn’t mean they should.
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