When organizations grow beyond using third-party platforms, they face a critical challenge: how to build internal platforms that enable teams to work efficiently while maintaining security and compliance. Abby Bangser, founding principal engineer at Syntasso, shares insights on creating real-world platforms that strike the right balance between standardization and flexibility.

Key Insights

• The shift from external platforms to internal ones often comes from specific business needs, like compliance requirements
• Successful platform engineering requires finding the right balance between prescriptive standards and flexible customization
• Platforms should offer multiple levels of abstraction - from simplified "paved paths" to advanced customization options
• Platform teams should watch how users interact with their services to identify emerging patterns and needs

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Testing smart TV applications presents unique challenges that traditional web testing approaches can't solve. Dave Lucia, CTO and co-founder of TV Labs, shares how his team built a platform that virtualizes televisions and set-top boxes to help media companies test their smart TV apps on physical devices.

Learn about TV Labs' innovative architecture and how they handle everything from camera-based testing systems to their custom Lua-based DSL for faster test execution. A key highlight is how choosing Elixir as their primary technology has enabled TV Labs to build a robust orchestration system. The language's built-in capabilities for fault tolerance, process isolation, and distributed computing make it particularly well-suited for managing concurrent connections and real-time state across multiple devices.

The discussion also explores practical insights about system architecture, including how TV Labs leverages Phoenix presence for real-time device state tracking and achieves microsecond-level performance for message broadcasting.

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Why do 70% of organizations still struggle to adopt infrastructure as code? Sören Martius, CPO and co-founder of Terramate, joins Cory O'Daniel to tackle the challenges of modern infrastructure management and the delicate balance between vendor trust and lock-in.

The conversation explores practical solutions for common infrastructure challenges, from managing monolithic state files to orchestrating complex deployments. Martius shares insights on:

• When to maintain a monolithic state file versus breaking it into smaller units
• How infrastructure needs evolve as engineering teams grow beyond 100 people
• Why anti-lock-in features build trust with operations teams
• The role of AI in detecting and remediating infrastructure misconfigurations

For teams wrestling with infrastructure complexity or evaluating new tools, this discussion offers practical perspectives on building scalable, maintainable infrastructure while avoiding common pitfalls around vendor lock-in and team adoption.

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