Understanding Modern Application Platforms
Key Points
- An application platform is an integrated stack—including Linux, Kubernetes, CI/CD tools, container registries, storage, service mesh, developer SDKs, runtimes, APIs, security, and more—designed to boost developer productivity and simplify deployment across data‑center, cloud, or edge environments.
- Building a platform yourself means selecting and assembling components from the CNCF’s 170+ projects (plus any commercial tools), which demands extensive time, expertise, and ongoing effort to secure, operate, and continuously update—a task that is rarely a core business focus.
- Using a cloud provider’s managed Kubernetes still leaves you responsible for assembling the remaining platform pieces, and differences in OS versions and lifecycle management across providers can increase operational overhead and hurt portability, especially when spanning multiple clouds.
- A modern turnkey solution like Red Hat OpenShift bundles over 50 open‑source projects into a unified, supported platform, reducing complexity, easing multi‑cloud/edge consistency, and allowing teams to focus on delivering applications rather than maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
Sections
- What Is an Application Platform - An application platform is an integrated technology stack—comprising Linux, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, container registries, service meshes, developer tools, runtimes, API management, networking, security, and more—that enhances developer productivity and streamlines deployment and operations across data‑center, cloud, or edge environments.
- Choosing a Turnkey Application Platform - The speaker compares DIY platform builds and managed Kubernetes across multiple clouds—highlighting their operational and compliance challenges—and advocates using Red Hat OpenShift as an integrated, open‑source solution that simplifies deployment and maintenance.
- Flexible Application Platform Options - The speaker outlines how, beyond containers and Kubernetes, teams can choose a self‑managed, cloud‑provided, or integrated application platform that lets them adopt service meshes and existing DevOps tools at their own pace while avoiding early lock‑in and handling hybrid environment challenges.
Full Transcript
# Understanding Modern Application Platforms **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BcEYexzlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BcEYexzlU) **Duration:** 00:07:09 ## Summary - An application platform is an integrated stack—including Linux, Kubernetes, CI/CD tools, container registries, storage, service mesh, developer SDKs, runtimes, APIs, security, and more—designed to boost developer productivity and simplify deployment across data‑center, cloud, or edge environments. - Building a platform yourself means selecting and assembling components from the CNCF’s 170+ projects (plus any commercial tools), which demands extensive time, expertise, and ongoing effort to secure, operate, and continuously update—a task that is rarely a core business focus. - Using a cloud provider’s managed Kubernetes still leaves you responsible for assembling the remaining platform pieces, and differences in OS versions and lifecycle management across providers can increase operational overhead and hurt portability, especially when spanning multiple clouds. - A modern turnkey solution like Red Hat OpenShift bundles over 50 open‑source projects into a unified, supported platform, reducing complexity, easing multi‑cloud/edge consistency, and allowing teams to focus on delivering applications rather than maintaining the underlying infrastructure. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BcEYexzlU&t=0s) **What Is an Application Platform** - An application platform is an integrated technology stack—comprising Linux, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, container registries, service meshes, developer tools, runtimes, API management, networking, security, and more—that enhances developer productivity and streamlines deployment and operations across data‑center, cloud, or edge environments. - [00:03:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BcEYexzlU&t=193s) **Choosing a Turnkey Application Platform** - The speaker compares DIY platform builds and managed Kubernetes across multiple clouds—highlighting their operational and compliance challenges—and advocates using Red Hat OpenShift as an integrated, open‑source solution that simplifies deployment and maintenance. - [00:06:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BcEYexzlU&t=377s) **Flexible Application Platform Options** - The speaker outlines how, beyond containers and Kubernetes, teams can choose a self‑managed, cloud‑provided, or integrated application platform that lets them adopt service meshes and existing DevOps tools at their own pace while avoiding early lock‑in and handling hybrid environment challenges. ## Full Transcript
What is an application platform?
Containers are a popular way to deploy new applications or modernize existing ones.
As the number of containers increase, teams typically use Kubernetes to manage the container estate,
but Kubernetes is not enough.
It's just one part of something called an application platform.
What's an application platform?
It's an integrated technology stack of tools meant to increase developer productivity,
and streamline the deployment and operations of applications
that are deployed to a data center to a cloud or edge environments.
So what makes up an application platform?
An application platform is comprised of an operating system, usually Linux,
Kubernetes,
your CI/CD tools for DevOps,
OS images,
a container repository to hold the containers,
stored services,
like software, defined storage,
a service mesh,
and then developer tools,
think of those as like plug ins, SDKs and frameworks,
application services,
languages, Runtimes API management messaging tools, services,
and everybody's favorite,
security and compliance.
These are just a couple examples of what constitutes an application platform.
Other things include software defined networking, virtualization management, portals, and the like.
Now there's a few ways you can go about building an application platform.
One way is you could do it yourself.
How do you go about doing that?
Well, you can go to the Cloud Native Compute Foundation,
where they have over 170 projects.
You look through them and pick what you wanted to use and maybe add some commercial offerings as well.
You'd have to go ahead institution together.
Can you do that?
Do you the time, the attention and the capability to do that?
Or to review 170 different projects to figure out what's best for you?
Can you deploy to production, secure it, manage it, update it on a continual basis.
You've got to ask yourself, is this really core to your business?
Most likely not.
There is a second way you can deploy an application platform, and that's to use a cloud service provider.
Most cloud providers offer a managed Kubernetes offering, which is great,
but you still have to build the rest of your application platform.
Going back to the CNCF, looking at the projects,
integrating in some commercial stuff, maybe some cloud services,
but there's a challenge:
The operating systems in the versions of Kubernetes offered by the cloud providers
might be different than what you run in your data center or edge locations.
Their lifecycle different, which increases the operational burden and potentially limits application portability.
Also, what if you deployed to
four clouds now you've exponentially increased the complexity in your environment
and how do you manage this? How do you secure it?
How do you maintain it from a from a compliance perspective?
There's a third way to build an application platform, and that's to use a modern turnkey application platform
like Red Hat OpenShift, that's built on over 50 open source projects.
Red Hat takes the burden of navigating a fast moving, complex ecosystem to put together the application platform for you.
Now, what does that look like?
It looks like this, very similar,
operating system,
and we talked about Kubernetes,
and the CI/CD tooling,
OS images, and the repository.
We had the storage,
service mesh,
developer tools,
application services,
and don't forget security and compliance.
Now, the benefit of going down this route is packaged updates and support.
This is supported from the top to the bottom through Kubernetes, through the operating system.
There's a level of consistency that this provides as well.
This turnkey application platform can be deployed to your data center, to a public cloud, to an edge location,
and it maintains the same development operations and management services processes.
Everything's the same for you regardless of where you deploy.
So there's some efficiencies gained in going down that path.
It's also flexible. What do you mean?
If you don't have the time or don't want to run a service mesh immediately, you don't have to. You can turn it on later.
There's also flexible in the sense that if you already have DevOps tooling in place,
you don't have to use was provided, you can use what you have.
So let's recap.
Containers are being used for new or modernizing existing applications.
Kubernetes is used to manage those containers, but it's not enough.
You need an application platform.
You could do it yourself.
There's challenges associated with that.
A cloud provider is another option, but the difference is an operating system,
and Kubernetes versions could be a challenge from a hybrid perspective.
You can use an integrated stack as well.