DevOps adoption has been going on for a decade and shows no signs of slowing. In Forrester’s 2024 developer experience survey, 87% of developers indicated that their organisation had already adopted DevOps practices or planned to do so in the coming year.
But for many organisations, scaling their DevOps practice has been complicated, expensive and, in the end, insufficient in delivering the value leaders had expected. These organisations start with a grassroots approach to DevOps adoption, with each team self-selecting its toolchain, creating its best practices and infusing its institutional knowledge.
Forrester clients tell us this team-based approach breaks down at scale. It creates as many problems as it solves and does not deliver the results the C-suite was expecting.
For instance, bespoke toolchains create headaches. Organisations that took this approach are now saddled with too many unique toolchains, each requiring nurturing by the same developers who are supposed to be building customer-focused products. These toolchains also require unique automation, create trapped institutional knowledge, contribute to tool sprawl and limit any chance for volume DevOps tool pricing.
All these factors create headaches for IT leaders trying to reduce overheads while improving productivity and efficiency.
Many organisations now understand that improving the developer experience increases efficiency by removing impediments to the development process. High among those impediments is unnecessary context switching, which breaks the concentration of developers and decreases flow.
Disconnected automation tools, multiple systems of record and multiple platforms slow developers down by forcing them to play hopscotch with numerous tools. Without a common platform as the backbone, when developers change projects, they may go through entirely new onboarding procedures to get access to repositories and commit their first pull request.
The lack of standardised practices causes governance issues as well. Without a standard approach to software delivery, you end up with ad hoc governance implemented differently depending on the toolchain. This creates trust barriers between developers and enterprise governance teams, can add manual oversight and red tape that slows processes down, and works against efforts to improve productivity and efficiency at scale.
Another issue software developers face is that the traditional IT service catalogue is a heavyweight solution. Many organisations have had service portals for years, grounded in IT and enterprise service management practices and based on products such as ServiceNow, Atlassian’s Jira Service Management or BMC Helix.
These tools remain because they often serve non-technical users and may be leveraged by traditional infrastructure organisations for ticketed offerings. However, developers find ticket ops to be too slow and unresponsive, which is why a market emerged for dedicated internal developer platforms (IDPs).
A scaled platform for services
IDPs provide a framework for creating an IT platform where services can be defined, automated and exposed across the enterprise.
Examples of IT services that can be incorporated into an IDP include allocating a new piece of infrastructure, such as a new virtual machine, instantiating an automated continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to build and deliver code, or creating the scaffolding for a new microservice project using organisational best practices.
Internal developer platforms provide a framework for creating an IT platform where services can be defined, automated and exposed across the enterprise Forrester
IDPs facilitate management and access to service automations by providing a framework to manage and expose automation at scale.
IDPs can provide visibility into tools and frameworks. One feature of IDPs is scorecards, which provide information about both the technical and business performance of technologies. This helps developers make the right choice when faced with multiple frameworks, and also gives leaders insight into adoption.
New tool adoption becomes apparent to leadership, as does abandonment of older technologies, enabling leaders to deprecate and remove older components when it makes sense for the business.
At a high level, IDPs can serve a similar role to traditional platform as a service (PaaS) by providing an abstraction layer to IT infrastructure services. However, whereas many PaaS implementations have opaque abstraction layers, IDPs offer a transparent layer via service definition files that enable developers and infrastructure engineers to view, reuse and improve upon the underlying abstraction mechanisms.
Platform builders need to understand these differences to determine which abstraction model will serve their needs best.
There are several reasons for its adoption. Spotify has a reputation for transformational engineering processes. Many organisations have adopted the now-famous Spotify model, featuring squads, tribes and guilds. Having Backstage reside in the CNCF ensures governance and a healthy community of contributors and adopters. A growing number of commercial DevOps tool suppliers support Backstage plug-ins. And most importantly, because it’s open source, Backstage is free for developers to download and try, further accelerating interest in platforms in general.
Before committing to an IDP, IT leaders should build a compelling business case outlining which benefits the IDP will bring to the organisation and how it will measure these Forrester
Many teams had assumed, or hoped, that Backstage was a ready-to-use platform, but soon became overwhelmed by its complexity. This has created an opportunity for commercial software providers to differentiate their offerings from Backstage. These commercial tools providers claim their products are easier to get started with, have a lower learning curve and offer technological advantages to Backstage, such as providing a service orchestration layer.
Spotify also offers Backstage as a paid commercial subscription that includes product support, additional plugins and no-code capabilities to help companies get started faster with greater confidence. Users see these commercial add-ons, such as Soundcheck (a plug-in that helps teams visualise quality, security and reliability checks on services), as value-adds.
Before committing to an IDP, Forrester recommends IT leaders build a compelling business case outlining which benefits the IDP will bring to the organisation and how it will measure these. Developing a comprehensive business plan will ensure alignment between the stakeholders funding the platform initiative and those responsible for its creation.
Forrester has found that nearly every IDP company and end user who has successfully built an IDP started small by building a proof of concept (PoC). The first implementation can take several weeks to months.
Forrester recommends that IT leaders first identify a team that is collaborative and sees the benefit of an IDP approach. Then, build the PoC around a few of members’ crucial needs while engaging with them for additional suggestions and even their own contributions to improve the IDP. This approach can be built upon and used as a springboard for other teams to continue to grow the IDP in a sustainable way.
When I first received a copy of one of this year’s great cookbooks, it stopped me in my tracks. There’s such a rush of books at the end of the year that I usually make a couple stacks at the far end of my desk, then attack them methodically, but this book was different. The cover was inviting, like I landed in a party where the drinks and people looked fun and beautiful, and at the same time it immediately started answering questions about the food and culture. Amazingly, that serendipity happened five times this fall.
What makes this group of books unique is that they are all artistic big swings. It’s almost like the authors, photographers, editors, and art department folks stood in a circle, put their hands in the middle, counted to three, and shouted “go for broke!’
There have been isolated versions of similar greatness in the last few years, often in surprising corners of the cookbook kingdom. Recent favorites from the last few years include Koreaworld, Korean American, Start Here, Oaxaca, Big Dip Energy, and maybe even Molly Baz’s trippy More Is More. The resulting efforts opened me up like a favorite piece of art, making me happy and making learning effortless, everything working together to draw me in further.
My hope is that this is the start of a new way forward, because once you start comparing this bunch with older cookbooks, or those from publishers with rigid and repetitive styles, those quickly start to look boring. This year’s bumper crop looks at salsa, instant ramen noodles, drinking culture, a country, and home baking. Subtle they aren’t, but they get you cooking, eating, drinking, and dreaming, which sounds like cookbook perfection to me. More really is more. Enjoy!
We’ll have one more selection of cookbooks to recommend before the year is up, so check back next week for the full list of 2025’s best. In the meantime, also see our recent recommendations for disaspora cookbooks. Also see winning titles from 2024 and 2023.
Looking to bridge and eventually transcend the world of traditional mobile networks with IP communications infrastructures ahead of the shutdown of 3G services in the country, leading Swiss national railway operator Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (SBB) has delivered what is claimed to be Europe’s first live integration of legacy railway communications system GSM-R with an advanced IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) platform with voice over LTE (VoLTE) service using Ericsson technology.
With the mission statement of connecting Switzerland, and with 35,500 employees, SBB transports over 1,410,000 people and 170,000 tonnes of freight to their destinations every day. It also operates the mobile network for all Swiss railways on the standard gauge network.
For years, voice roaming for Swiss rail communication relied on telco Swisscom’s public 3G network in areas where GSM-R coverage was not available. GSM-R is the current standard for secure, reliable railway communications, supporting essential voice and data for train control and operations.
With Swisscom’s decision to decommission its 3G services, Swiss railway operators faced an urgent need to modernise. Expanding the old GSM-R system was one option, but SBB engaged Ericsson to deliver a platform based on IMS and VoLTE, bridging GSM-R rail-specific functions with modern mobile and fixed telephony systems.
The infrastructure upgrade is intended to ensure uninterrupted, nationwide railway communication for Switzerland’s 3,100km rail network ahead of the planned decommissioning of Swisscom’s 3G services by the end of 2025. Furthermore, onboard 4G service upgrades have been implemented for about 1,000 trains, in a move that Ericsson says no less then redefines connectivity and reliability for SBB’s railway operations.
Said to offer resilience and innovation, the new system ensures continuous end-to-end rail communication, setting benchmarks for railway operators across Europe facing legacy telecom shutdowns.
In addition, the deployment strategy aimed to prioritise zero service interruptions and robust safety compliance. Key features of the IMS implementation included IMS-GSM-R interworking, GSM-R numbering adaptation and mandatory safety-critical functions such as emergency stop calls.
The IMS/VoLTE integration progressed through a number of key testing phases: platform deployment was initiated in June 2023; the first end-to-end VoLTE-to-GSM-R calls were successfully completed in early 2024; field tests across pilot trains, certified by Switzerland’s Federal Authority Office of Transport, took place in January 2025; and nationwide go-live of the system occurred in April 2025 ahead of schedule. The infrastructure is currently in operation with approximately 450 trains and 1,000 operational devices using VoLTE technology with zero downtime.
Ericsson says the live IMS/VoLTE platform guarantees high-performance rail communication with scalable, modernised dispatcher telephony, reducing risks and limitations of the legacy infrastructure. Key rail-specific functions – including EIRENE functional numbering (European Integrated Radio Enhanced Network), emergency stop calls, group calls and onboard announcements – have been preserved.
By enabling 4G/5G, Switzerland’s railway network is attributed with avoiding service interruptions from the 3G shutdown while laying the groundwork for upcoming 5G-based Future Railway Mobile Communication System innovations. Migrations to date are said to have proceeded smoothly, supported by training provided to SBB’s operational teams.
While the full migration of train fleet communications and smartphone operations continues towards its December 2025 completion, the collaboration is said to have paved the way for future enhancements. Insights gained during this project will guide improvements in strategies for similar railway transformations globally.
Before anything else, you’ll have to decide between ink and laser. I’ll get into the details when it comes to each model, but the most important consideration is paper type, because it’s a limitation rather than a benefit. Laser printers use heat in the bonding process, which means if you regularly print on windowed envelopes or photo paper, you’ll need to either use an ink printer or change to a thermally safe alternative, which can be cost prohibitive if you print a lot.
Inkjets are the most common flavor of home printer, and they work like you might expect, by boiling ink until it splatters through a series of tiny holes. You didn’t expect that? Me neither! Pretty exciting stuff.
Inkjet printers come in two flavors, with either prefilled cartridges or built-in tanks. The latter is quickly becoming more popular thanks to better pricing, more convenience, and a massive reduction in wasted plastic. If you’re buying a new printer in 2025 you should opt for an ink tank, if not a laser printer. They’re a little more work to setup and maintain, since you have to keep the tanks topped off, and they should remain in one place on a flat surface to avoid leaks. I can’t imagine many situations where a printer would be constantly moving and tilting, but it’s a consideration.
You thought InkJets were cool? Laser printers work by blasting a tube full of dried plastic particles, then fusing them to the paper with heat. They tend to cost more upfront, but the cost per page is overall much lower. Where a $20 ink cartridge might print 200 pages, a $60 toner cartridge could print 2000. They tend to be a lot faster than inkjet printers, and you don’t have to worry about them drying out. Plus, the pages come out of the printer nice and warm, and you can’t really put a price on that.
There are also thermal printers, which are commonly used for receipts or shipping labels. Instead of filling the printer with ink and depositing it onto a surface, they apply heat in precise patterns to special paper, allowing you to print text and images in low resolution, and typically in one color. If you print shipping labels or simple stickers at home, these can save you a lot of time and ink cost, but they have more limitations.
Laser printers are my preferred type, as long as your paper type and budget can support them, but most home users will be happy with an ink tank printer.
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