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What should platform engineering look like? | Computer Weekly

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What should platform engineering look like? | Computer Weekly


Platform engineering is based on the principles of product management and the product model applied to digital and IT systems. Fast-moving digital teams show resistance to strict process frameworks such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and IT service management (ITSM), and autonomous digital or IT product teams are becoming self-sufficient, reducing the need for traditional infrastructure engineers.

Platform engineering, grounded in product management principles, offers an approach to modernising IT operations. By injecting product thinking into platform teams, Forrester believes technology organisations can position themselves for the future.

What is platform engineering?

Forrester has compiled a capability model for platform engineering that includes frequently covered technical aspects and less frequently covered management capabilities. It is an inventory of things you should think deeply about and ensure you have covered via your organisational resources, which might include not only dedicated organisations, but also cross-functional processes, enablement teams, or other mechanisms.

Your capabilities are how your customers experience the platform. They are your front door, so to speak. Your customers will discover your platform, onboard onto it, provision it, interact with its application programming interfaces (APIs), leverage patterns for security and performance, and call for help via these capabilities. And no, there is no such thing as an entirely automated self-service platform.

Users and developers need to be able to discover the platform and its services. Managing your platform like a product means you understand the onboarding journey of users and invite them to be part of the process of defining – and even contributing to – developer platform capabilities.

They will expect easy, frictionless authorisation and access, with few, if any, human-in-the-loop workflow-based approvals. Once provisioned and actively developing, they will need information about the ongoing status of the services they are consuming.

Usually, larger organisations will have a service catalogue or portal capability for IT services. If this does not exist, you must fund and create it. Developer-focused portals – for example, Spotify Backstage, Harness Internal Developer Portal, Atlassian Compass – are gaining popularity. Toyota of North America, for instance, includes consumable blueprints, a discoverable software catalogue, education and training resources, and operational reporting for FinOps and other metrics in its developer portal.

Access to platform services and resources is typically a two-stage process, with initial provisioning (setting up accounts) followed by day-to-day demand (provisioning virtual machines, clusters, and so on). While setting up the account may require some human approvals, day-to-day demand requires API access.

A platform that cannot provision, configure and manage base resources via APIs is not a true platform. Typically, platforms support APIs to instantiate and configure required resources, such as processing nodes, data stores, queues, pipelines and observability probes. There are significant API design questions. Many organisations generally have API engineering capabilities, but may not have explored the nuances of supporting self-service provisioning. 

Users of the platform also require ready access to documentation on how to use it. How will these be created and maintained? Typically, a wiki is used for core system quick starts and how-to guides. Forrester recommends documenting patterns as code and managing them via source control. It is also advisable to define the processes, roles and responsibilities for those in charge of these resources. Saying that it is everyone’s responsibility is tempting, but that approach does not work at scale or in the long run.

Support is another key capability. Platforms are typically highly leveraged. Users building tenant applications may not understand the system. The system may not behave as expected. For these and other reasons, you will likely need some level of on-call support. Human contact is required, even in the age of ChatGPT.

Most organisations have ticketed support management, such as with BMC Software and ServiceNow, for example. This may be used to support the base platforms, and tenant applications may leverage it. However, as Forrester notes, fewer have a robust major incident/critical event management capability, which is essential. Such capabilities are based on products like PagerDuty or Everbridge.

Operational capabilities 

The focus for many platform engineering architectures and frameworks is the operational capabilities, especially those that are more technical. While there are many kinds of infrastructure platform components, the fundamental DevOps chain capabilities appear in most platform engineering discussions.

Forrester recommends that deployments and operational architectures are controlled for governance and policy. Increasingly, this is done as code, such as through Open Policy Agent and similar approaches. Required design patterns, configurations and hardening standards should all be checked. Are software-bill-of-materials (SBOM) checks increasingly mandatory? What are the consequences if they fail? If there is a change management process, how is risk calculated? Are chaos tests recommended or required by policy?

The platform’s direct (administrative/developer) users must be identified and authorised, and the products and applications they are building will require identity and access services, which might be quite different from the services controlling administrator access to the platform. Which are you supporting?

Forrester recommends that IT decision-makers check whether common directory services are available to administrators, if there is privileged access management and, if multifactor authentication (MFA) is being used, whether single sign-on, and/or directory services are available for users of the tenants. The pipeline needs to offer security testing such as software composition analysis, SBOM generation and static application security testing.

Considering that applications, or workloads, are installed on resources once provisioned, it is useful to have a full set of development pipeline resources within infrastructure platforms. These should include access to source control and package management, perhaps via proxying cloud services such as GitHub or GitLab. 

In addition, the IT infrastructure on which the workload is deployed will require provisioning of base IT resources, which will need to be configured and managed. This is generally achieved through infrastructure automation. IT decision-makers should check whether run-time provisioning is based on Terraform or is hyperscaler-specific. Does the platform provide a proxy layer to a cloud provider?

Once initially provisioned, configuration may be a separate concern – for example, with Red Hat, Chef, or Perforce Software [Puppet] – which can also control for drift. There is a wide variation, which depends on technical feasibility.

Deployment support

Platform engineering can include AIOps, so IT decision-makers should also look at how the platform itself is monitored and observed, and how operational insights are generated.

What is the relationship between AIOps and action (for example, support)? Forrester recommends that IT decision-makers assess services like monitoring, logging and tracing that are available to tenant applications. How is user experience understood? For instance, an application performance management or AIOps tool might be available as part of the platform for real-time insights that span platforms and encompass the whole IT estate. These insights may then be published on a developer portal.

Finally, Forrester notes the significance of platform reliability. IT decision-makers should assess how the platform itself is managed for resilience, availability and learning. For example, site reliability engineers might have a specific function in defining the platform approach, leading major incident response and retrospectives, and reviewing operations. A retrospective could lead to identifying a risk for which a chaos engineering approach might be used as a control.

Overall, Forrester regards platform engineering as a viable approach to tackle traditional team silos in areas such as compute, storage, networking and middleware, where teams struggle to meet market demands for innovation and employees prefer a collaborative and responsive work environment. As such, product-centric thinking in IT platform management can be used to enhance service delivery.


This article is based on an excerpt of The Forrester platform engineering capability model. The author, Charles Betz, is vice-president principal analyst and leads Forrester’s enterprise architecture team.



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The Best iPhone Charger for Late-Night Doomscrolling

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The Best iPhone Charger for Late-Night Doomscrolling


The best iPhone charger depends on several factors. Are you topping off your battery on the go? Do you want to charge your iPhone as quickly as possible? Are you charging it overnight on your nightstand? The best gear recommendation is going to change with the situation. Luckily, the WIRED Reviews team tests iPhone chargers in the field all year long. There’s not a day that goes by that at least one of us is not assessing at least one iPhone charger. I’ve gathered up our favorite picks for every scenario.

Be sure to check out our related buying guides, like the Best Power Banks, the Best 3-in-1 Chargers, and the Best Wireless Chargers.

Table of Contents

The Best iPhone Chargers

Best Wall Charger for iPhone

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Anker

Nano 45W With USB-C Cable

This Anker charger is slick and has folding prongs so it’s easy to travel with, but the best part is that it can charge your phone at 40 watts (average is 20 to 27 watts). That means you can get up to 50 percent battery life in only 20 minutes. Not all iPhone models support charging this fast—it’s limited to iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max—but you may as well future-proof your gear if you’re shopping for a wall charger, even if your phone can’t take full advantage of those speeds yet.

Best Power Bank for iPhone

Small rounded rectangular bright blue device beside a black rectangular device, both with strap handles.

We do recommend the Anker Laptop Power Bank as our top-pick power bank, but if you’re only trying to top off your iPhone, this is a very reliable and neat-looking power bank. It’s svelte, smaller than a deck of cards, and can deliver 20 watts to two devices at once. Nimble also makes a slightly larger version, which has a larger capacity and can charge at up to 65 watts. Aside from the cool design featuring speckled colors and a lanyard loop, Nimble also uses bioplastics, recycled materials, and minimal packaging. A USB-C charger is included in the box.

Best MagSafe Portable Charger for iPhone

Gear-Anker_MagGo_Qi2-SOURCE-Simon-Hill

Anker

MagGo Power Bank (10K) (Qi2)

This 10,000-mAh power bank can charge your device at up to 15 watts, but it’ll also charge older devices at a slower rate. It has a built-in kickstand and an LED display that lets you know how much power is left at a glance. It works in portrait or landscape modes. Be aware that it won’t be able to charge most phones fully more than once, but it’s hard to beat if you’re seeking wireless charging on the go. If you want a bigger capacity or faster charging, you don’t want MagSafe.

Best 3-in-1 Charger for iPhone

Image may contain: Wood, Plywood, Electrical Device, Microphone, Furniture, Table, Hardwood, Tabletop, Person, and Desk

Belkin

3-in-1 Qi2 Charging Stand

The Belkin 3-in-1 can charge your compatible iPhone at 15 watts, plus your AirPods and your Apple Watch at the same time. The charging pad can be tilted to your preferred angle, including in landscape orientation if you want to watch a video or put your phone in StandBy mode. The USB-C cable is permanently attached, which you may or may not like. Check our best 3-in-1 chargers buying guide for additional picks.

Best 2-in-1 Charger for iPhone

Image may contain: Electronics, and Speaker

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

Mophie

2-in-1 Wireless Charging Stand

I love a 3-in-1 charger as much as the next tech nerd, but sometimes they’re overkill. My Apple Watch battery usually lasts all day long, but I can chew through my older AirPods battery before my lunch break hits, and my iPhone battery might be depleted too, depending on whether or not I’m streaming Max Velocity off to the side. This 2-in-1 charger has been my steadfast desktop companion. Mophie makes another version that tops off your Apple Watch and iPhone instead of your headphones, which might be what you want if you’re rocking wired headphones or you’re making intense use of a walking pad throughout the day. There’s a 40-watt wall charger in the box—a rarity these days!—plus a USB-C cable that winds neatly into the base. It’s easy to adjust the angle of your iPhone as well, and I’ve found the base very sturdy. If you want to charge, but not necessarily all of the possible devices simultaneously, these might be what you seek.

Anker

Prime USB-C to USB-C Cable

This braided nylon USB-C cable has a durable exterior made from recycled plastic. The cable is rugged, with Anker promising that it can operate in temperatures ranging from negative 40 degrees to 176 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s backed by a lifetime warranty. It’s got a built-in cable management loop. It’s more than enough cable for your iPhone. Read our guide to the Best USB-C Cables for more picks.

Ugreen

USB-C to Lightning Cable

If your iPhone is still rocking the Lightning cable, this is gonna be way better than whatever shoddy cable Apple sent you. It’s durable and is Made for iPhone-certified, so you won’t have any problems getting it to work. It comes in 3-, 6-, or 10-foot lengths with a two-year warranty. Best of all, the exterior casing will stay intact, unlike what you’d probably get with Apple’s cables.



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DSIT gets sums badly wrong on AI datacentre carbon footprint | Computer Weekly

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DSIT gets sums badly wrong on AI datacentre carbon footprint | Computer Weekly


Government figures for projected carbon footprint for datacentres have been miscalculated. New figures for the likely carbon output resulting from electricity use by datacentres published last week have been revised upwards by around 100x for the minimum and maximum projected. 

Last July, the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) published its Compute evidence annex, which set out the future for AI, compute demand and implications for carbon footprint. The DSIT has since unpublished the original report, but it can still be found here

The document said: “We estimate that by 2035, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions from AI compute could range from 0.025 to 0.142 MtCO₂ [millions of tonnes of CO₂] – this is below 0.05% of the UK’s projected total emissions.”

But in a correction to that document, the DSIT said last week: “The UK’s cumulative 10-year greenhouse gas emissions from AI compute could range from 34 to 123 MtCO₂ – this is around 0.9-3.4% of the UK’s projected total emissions over the 10-year period.”

The figures were miscalculated to a staggering degree. The earlier numbers appear to have been annual and the recent revision a 10-year figure, which makes an increase in the estimate of around 100x.

Meanwhile, analysis by climate change science and policy research group Carbon Brief suggests even those figures might be optimistic. Core to that belief is that the government aim is for 50gCO2/kWh by 2030. That figure is what can be achieved by “clean” sources of energy, such as wind, nuclear, hydro and solar. 

But figures from last month – researched by Carbon Brief and published with environmental campaigners Foxglove – suggest that is a wildly optimistic estimate if any of that power generation needs to be powered by gas, as gas-powered electricity generation comes with a carbon intensity of around 10x that of clean sources. 

Carbon Brief has calculated that emissions could in fact be somewhere between 3.4 MtCO₂ using 5% gas, and 68.1 MtCO₂ if electricity was 95% gas-generated. The higher figure – not far off the annual carbon emissions of Sweden – comes from an estimate based on a recent Ofgem projection of 20GW of future datacentre electricity demand. The same document illustrated the scale of demand by reference to actual peak demand in February 2026 of 45GW.

Ofgem’s 20GW is a projection based on National Energy System Operator research that asked customers about future grid connection requirements. 

Foxglove head of strategy Tim Squirrell said: “The government has a legally binding commitment to reach net zero by 2050. This already sat awkwardly alongside its hell-for-leather embrace of a hyperscale AI datacentre buildout, which unchecked could double the electricity consumption of the entire country.

“The situation has now been revealed to be much, much worse, given the fact the government doesn’t seem to have done even the most basic arithmetic needed to measure the potential new carbon emissions of these datacentres. The government urgently needs to confront the reality that it can’t rubber stamp hundreds of new datacentres, whilst keeping its manifesto promise to the country – and legal obligation – to combat the climate crisis.”

Computer Weekly has calculated that there is currently around 1.6GW of datacentre capacity in the UK, with just over 8GW currently in planning or under construction. 



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Almost 90% of women leave tech industry within 10 years | Computer Weekly

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Almost 90% of women leave tech industry within 10 years | Computer Weekly


Almost 90% of women choose to leave their tech career within 10 years of starting it, according to research from Akamai.

The tech services provider found that more than half of women leave their tech roles within the first five years of their career, and almost 90% within 10, making the average career length for a woman in tech in the UK six years. But the research also found that women would be willing to return to their tech career under the right circumstances.

Natalie Billingham, EMEA managing director at Akamai, said: “These insights illustrate that the UK tech industry has a window of opportunity to impact the choices of women in tech – from the past and present, and in the future.

“By providing opportunities for progression, flexible work and appropriate remuneration, tech leaders on the precipice of technological innovation have the chance to create impactful change on the tech workforce, fostering longer-lasting tenures, diverse leadership and an environment where women can thrive.”

The stagnant number of women in the UK’s technology sector is nothing new, with previous research finding multiple reasons why the tech industry cannot retain women workers even when it has succeeded in the equally difficult task of attracting them.

As well as a lack of visible and accessible role models, poor opportunities for career progression and lack of flexibility are reasons women often cite for opting out of the tech industry.  The top reason women gave for quitting their tech roles was a lack of inclusive culture.

More than 50% said they left because they didn’t feel as though they belonged, 40% said it was because of a lack of gender diversity in leadership positions, and 10% said gender bias played a role in their exit from the technology sector.

Nearly three-quarters of women cited a lack of career progression as playing a part in their decision to leave the sector, while 19% stated it was their definitive reason for moving away from tech.

Flexible working has been an ongoing challenge for women in the technology sector, who often leave because they cannot balance working in an inflexible workplace when they often carry a disproportionate amount of the care burden at home.

More than half of women who have left the sector said they did so because of stringent working hours, with 15% outlining that there was no ability to work flexibly and more than 40% stated there was a lack of work-life balance. This could tie in with the 19% of women who said their main reason for leaving tech was due to burnout and a negative impact on their mental health.

Out of the large number of women who have left the technology sector, 15% are currently not working, while 13% moved into finance, 13% moved into teaching, and 12% chose to work in healthcare.

Just over 30% said they left the technology industry of their own volition and prefer their new employment situation, while many said they had no plans to return to tech.

But almost 40% claimed they would be willing to come back to their technology career under the right circumstances, of which pay, career progression and better flexibility were key factors. Just under 20% said better opportunities for career progression could entice them back to tech, while 48% said a higher salary would be the defining factor in their decision to return, and 38% would come back for better flexibility.

Out of those who have come back to the sector after having left, more than half did so because of an increase in pay, and 43% did so because of renewed opportunities for career progression.

Over 40% also claimed they returned to their tech career because they were given better work-life balance, and 37% of women who have left tech said they would consider returning to the industry if they were able to work flexibly, such as working part-time, job sharing or hybrid working. Those who have returned 90% said they’re likely to stay at least two more years if not more.

Hazel Little, CEO of Career Returners, said: “The findings provide a valuable picture of what mid‑career women are looking for to return to tech, and it’s encouraging to see that the majority could be persuaded to come back under the right conditions.

“Progression pathways are crucial for retaining talent, but equally important is ensuring that women who want to return have clear, supported ways to re-enter the sector in the first place. When employers build both return pathways and progression pathways, they create an environment where women can come back, grow and stay.”



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