the key to reducing Time to Market and reducing costs

In recent years, Russia has seen a significant increase in interest in tool platforms that simplify the software development process. The data says so State of DevOps Russia 2024 report from the company “Express 42”. We have previously shared the results of this research on the topics IT infrastructure of Russian companies And orchestrators. And today we’ll talk about the state of tool platforms in Russian DevOps.

In this article we will analyze changes in the availability of platforms in companies, their functionality and business value. We will also pay attention to the difficulties that teams face when using and developing them. Note that the last time questions about platforms were asked was in the 2020 study, so current data is compared with indicators from four years ago.

Availability of platforms in companies

The report shows that the number of companies using a single tool platform has increased significantly since 2020 – from 20 to 26.2%:

The main driver of growth is businesses’ awareness of the importance of automation and optimization of development processes. Ivan Kalutsky, director of infrastructure at Avito, emphasizes: “Platformization is a big trend, but not new. In all big clouds, the user gets a transparent experience in any part of the same ecosystem, be it CI/CD or S3 Storage.”

At the same time, against the backdrop of an increase in the number of companies with unified platforms, the number of respondents who do not have platforms in their organization is also increasing. This figure has increased since 2020 from 27 to 36.2%. But it’s too early to talk about any trend here. IN article about IT infrastructure We noted that DevOps is becoming increasingly popular outside of IT and fintech. Therefore, there may be a situation where new companies have not yet had time to think about or develop their own platforms.

Data analysis also shows that as the size of the company increases, the share of respondents who chose the answer “We don’t have platforms” decreases:

Distribution of results depending on the number of employees

Thus, companies with up to 499 employees in half of the cases do not have platforms. At the same time, as the company’s staff grows, this share consistently decreases. If organizations with a staff of 500 to 1999 people do not have their own platforms in 36.7% of cases, then for businesses with more than 10,000 employees the share is only 11.7%. This is due to the fact that large organizations are more likely to strive for standardization of approaches.

At the same time, among large companies there is an increase in the share of “several complementary platforms.” This may be due to the need to develop separate platforms for different teams and departments.

Everything is clear with the percentage of companies that have platforms. What about the developers at these companies? How many of them use the platform? The report shows that more than 61% of developers at most companies are actively using the platforms, which is a significant increase from 2020, when the figure was 13%. This may be due to improved quality of services provided:

Value and benefits of using the platform

Next, respondents were asked what they saw as the value of an internal infrastructure platform. The result was the following distribution:

The leading values are:

reduction in Time to Market – 52.4%;
reduction of costs for supporting various technological solutions – 49%;
reduction in infrastructure ownership costs – 44.2%.

These metrics highlight the importance of platforms for improving development efficiency and reducing costs. Also, the majority of respondents noted that the introduction of platforms allowed them to focus on more important and complex work, freeing them from routine tasks, such as deploying and configuring infrastructure.

And according to the data research 2024 State of DevOps Report from the company Puppet (development of solutions for automating IT infrastructure management) increased productivity is the main advantage of having a platform in the company (58%):

The company's goals when developing the platform. Source — *The company's goals when developing the platform.* *Source*

Also among the leading advantages:

automation and standardization of processes – 51%;
reduction in delivery time – 50%;
increased safety – 49%.

In addition to the value of the platforms, their functionality is also important. Modern tooling platforms offer a variety of features, including deployment automation, configuration management, monitoring, and orchestration. This is how the places among the most important of them were distributed:

Common platform functionality includes:

monitoring – 60.2%;
management of infrastructure resources – 59.6%;
logging – 54.4%.

The least common services are checking for compliance with regulatory requirements and information security, as well as tracing and queuing services.

Difficulties when working with platforms

The study authors note that “developing a tool platform is a costly and complex project, but most companies invest in it anyway.” Many companies are facing difficulties when developing the platform. Here are the main ones:

The majority of respondents (41.3%) noted difficulties in developing a unified approach to the services provided. Many are also concerned about a lack of technical skills, time and resources.

By the way, according to a report from Puppet, among the most important skills for platform development, respondents note:

knowledge in the field of system integration – 88%;
ability to automate processes – 85%;
knowledge of CI/CD methodology – 82%.

How important are these skills to building a successful platform development team? Source — *How important are these skills to building a successful platform development team?* *Source*

But difficulties are encountered not only during the development of the platform, but also when using it:

The main challenges teams face when using platformssteel:

lack of documentation and examples of use – 36.7%;
lack of platform functionality – 32.2%;
lack of education and training – 32.2%.

These factors can make platforms much more difficult to use effectively and reduce their value to teams. Therefore, it is important to provide timely training and support to platform users to minimize the impact of these difficulties on productivity.

Platform developers

The study authors also asked who in companies is involved in developing the internal platform. The results were as follows:

As a result, in most cases, the developer necessarily takes part in the development of the platform (69%). He is slightly inferior to the DevOps specialist with 63.3%. In approximately every third platform team you can find a QA engineer/tester, Product Owner, Project Manager, SRE or analyst. Developer Advocate takes part in this less often.

In addition to this, it can be noted that according to research from Puppet, platform development teams are most often (23%) autonomous teams in the engineering part of the company structure:

Where are platform teams located in organizations? Source — *Where are platform teams located in organizations?* *Source*

At the same time, almost as often, platform development teams are part of the operational structure (22%) or are part of other engineering teams (21%).

The same study also states that by 2026, about 80% of companies plan to have a platform team on staff.

Conclusions

As a result of analyzing the data from the State of DevOps Russia 2024 report, several key points can be identified:

The number of respondents who do not have platforms in their organization has increased from 27 to 36.2% since 2020. This may be due to the emergence among respondents of employees of new companies interested in DevOps, who may not have yet had time to implement the platforms.
Large organizations are more likely to strive for standardization of approaches. For example, among such companies there is an increase in the share of “several complementary platforms.” This may be due to the need to develop platforms for different teams and departments.
The platforms' core values include reducing Time to Market and reducing costs. These metrics highlight the importance of platforms for improving development efficiency.
41.3% of respondents noted difficulties in developing a unified approach to the services provided. Key challenges include lack of technical skills and resources. Developing a tool platform requires significant cost and effort, but most companies continue to invest in this area.

In this article, we have collected only part of the research results that relate to tool platforms. Download detailed report The rest of the data can be found on the research website.