Puppet’s 2024 State of DevOps Report Reveals Security is Strengthened by Platform Engineering

Survey respondents confirm built-in security and compliance are delivered by self-service platforms, along with efficiency and increased developer productivity. 

Minneapolis, MN.,USA—March 19, 2024— Puppet by Perforce, the industry standard for infrastructure automation, today announced the findings of the global 2024 State of DevOps Report: The Evolution of Platform Engineering. This report follows the continued maturity of platform engineering, with 43% of respondents reporting they have had a platform team for at least 3-5 years.  

Since 2012, the annual State of DevOps Report produced by Puppet has reported on trends that impact DevOps success. In 2023, Puppet shifted the report’s focus to a trend in the space: platform engineering. Conducting an annual survey from around 500 individuals all working with or on a platform team, the 2024 report focuses on how platform engineering delivers efficiency, speed, and security to DevOps.  

Key findings include: 

Security is being built into the foundation of platform engineering, with far-reaching benefits for organizations who understand that Security is priority one. 

• 43% of respondents say that their platform has a dedicated security and compliance team, highlighting the importance of proactive security management. 
• Most respondents report that the platform team has helped their company become more compliant. 
• 51% of respondents say that platform teams are also responsible for enforcing software and tool versions for security updates. 

Standardized automation unlocks the full potential of DevOps. 

• Organizations report an average of 3 self-service platforms operating internally, indicating expansion and maturity since last year’s report. 
• “Automation,” “productivity,” and “standardized processes” are cited as the three top use cases that platform engineering helps solve.  
• 66% report that automating workflows and processes “is in scope” for their growing platform engineering teams.  

It’s critical that developers are supported by the platform engineering team to do their best work.  

• 52% say that a product manager is crucial to the success of the platform team. 
• Respondents cite “increased productivity,” “better quality of software,” and “reduced lead time for deployment” as the top benefits that the platform team has delivered for developers.  
• 65% of respondents report that the platform team is important and will receive continued investment. 

“With the expanded scope of platform engineering, we’re seeing security become a critical component of platforms from the start,” said Kapil Tandon, VP of Product Management at Puppet by Perforce. “Security is everyone’s responsibility, but it’s notable that platform engineering has become a larger part of this critical work.” 

As the number of self-service platforms increase, the report also shows that most functions have moved onto a platform of their own — especially the security function “Platform engineering continues to enhance DevOps, and we are now seeing the impact on security and productivity.” Tandon continues.  

You can download the full report for free on the Puppet website.

Report Methodology 

The survey collected data from IT practitioners and leaders who work with or are part of their company’s platform engineering teams, as well as from a control group of similar participants who do not have platform teams at their organizations. The survey was conducted online from August 24 to September 30 2023 from three primary world regions NorAm (38%), EMEA (27%), APAC (22%) and Other (13%). Respondents were gathered through two avenues, a snowball sampling method and a panel. 

The report was sponsored by the Continuous Delivery Foundation, Humanitec, and Women in DevOps. 

Additional Resources 

• Learn more about Puppet by Perforce 
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• Read our blog 

About Puppet by Perforce 

Puppet by Perforce empowers people to innovate through infrastructure automation. For more than a dozen years, Puppet has led the way in IT infrastructure automation to simplify complexity for the masses in order to strengthen customers’ security posture, compliance standards, and business resiliency beyond the data center to the cloud. More than 40,000 organizations — including more than 80 percent of the Global 5000 — have benefited from Puppet’s open source and commercial solutions. In 2022, Puppet was acquired by Perforce Software. Learn more at puppet.com.