Your Platform Is About to Become Your Bottleneck

Hey folks,

AI is letting (or perhaps making) application engineers move 3-10x faster than they were 9 months ago.

So theory of constraints asks the question: what becomes the bottleneck?

The platform. If it wasn’t before, it sure is now.

CI/CD pipelines. Security guardrails. The IaC that lets teams spin up new services, databases, and supporting infrastructure. All of it was built for a slower pace of development. We're going to see platform organizations start to crack as this workflow was already a challenge BEFORE AI.

I keep coming back to this in conversations with folks across the industry. Had a great one recently with Sören Martius where he pointed out that right now, teams don't have budget for platform engineering and IaC. It's all going towards AI development and enablement.

And I get it. But here's the thing: when that AI investment results in software shipping so fast that the platform can't keep up, organizations are going to hit a wall.

You can't deploy 10x faster if your infrastructure provisioning still takes days. You can't ship 10x more services if your compliance is based on around a security review from a team of one. You can’t avoid supply chain attacks and illicit access to production secrets when security concerns are not shifted left.

The platform becomes the constraint for your software delivery.

I think we're headed towards a world where there's a big reinvestment in platforms. Right now, even with very little changes to the way we do IaC today, I still believe it's going to be a huge part of that story. And change will be coming there.

The companies that figure out investing in their platform while investing in AI are going to get the real ROI.

May your platforms be ready for whatever code your application engineers deliver,

Matt @ Masterpoint

PS If you want to chat about how we help architect IaC systems so teams can move 3x-10x as fast, grab some time on my calendar here.

PPS Did you know we have a referral program where you can make some extra cash? Know someone who needs some IaC expertise? Intro us and help out Masterpoint, one of your colleagues, and yourself at the same time.