In the past couple of years, lot’s of companies are providing platforms to their employees. Be it for Data Analytics, Compute, Self-Service-something. – Which is all great. I’ve even been involved in one myself.

The problem just is: What exactly is a “platform”? At some point, I was frustrated enough to say “Whenever a manager doesn’t know what s’he is talking about, s’he is talking about a platform“. And honestly this was fired by the fact that whenever I started digging into a definition, things became more than fuzzy.

So, what IS a platform? Gartner defines ist as

A platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services.

Platforms […] exist at many levels. They range from high-level platforms that enable a platform business model to low-level platforms that provide a collection of business and/or technology capabilities that other products or services consume to deliver their own business capabilities.

Defniition of a Platform (Digital Business) – Gartner

There’s nothing wrong with this definition. But it’s quite fuzzy. Imagine a normal Tech stack in an enterprise, how many platforms are you talking about?

• The datacenter / cloud providing the hardware.
• In Enterprises you usually have a central unit providing access to the cloud, they are also providing a plattform by their service.
• Are you running something like Databricks? It is a platform as well!
• Are you providing infrastructure service for your unit? You are providing a platform consisting of technical and orginzational boundaries!
• Do you provide a Code framework that abstracts common tasks? Another platform.
• And if your developers use that Framework so that others can also do something on their own, they are also providing a platform.

What stands out here is that the layers are a mix of pure technology but also processes (providing acces e.g).

But is that really enough?

To me – in a normal corporate context – a platform definition should go even a step further beyond technology and processes but also include a third element: people.

You need the technology (of course).
You want the processes (to ensure security & governance for example, onboarding, maintenance and monitoring, cost control).
And the mentioned people.

The people are in multiple roles:

• the developer community, working with / on the platform, helping each other and ensuring that rules are followed.
• the platform people enhancing and amintaining the platforms
• maybe a platform owner who plans the future of the platform and keeps the contact to developers and stakeholders.

This might make the definition more complex. But to me, it makes the definition ways more clear and understandable. It even does not vialoate Gartner’s definition because the people are part of the “service, that serves or enables other products or services“.

So whenever someone speaks about a platform, it might be worth asking what exactly they see as part of their platform.