Complementary stack part 5: The complementary stack

Any combination, one constant

The final installment of the Complementary Stack Series brings the previous four briefs together.

We’ve looked at Ansible as the execution layer, Terraform as the provisioning layer, and Backstage as the developer experience layer. But the conclusion isn’t that every organization needs all three. Different teams use different combinations of technologies, and those choices will continue to change as their infrastructure and requirements evolve.

Part 5 introduces the bigger idea behind the series: composable platform engineering. Use the execution, provisioning, and developer experience tools that make sense for your organization, while maintaining a consistent layer for governance, approvals, cost controls, ownership, lifecycle management, and orchestration across them.

In this brief, you’ll learn:

• How the four layers of the complementary stack fit together
• Why your organization may only need some of the execution, provisioning, and portal layers
• How a consistent governance layer supports a best-of-breed strategy
• Why tools underneath the governance layer can change without forcing you to rebuild every workflow
• How to evaluate whether a vendor’s self-service catalog actually provides cross-platform governance

The takeaway isn’t a fixed four-product architecture. Some organizations may use Ansible, Terraform, and Backstage; others may use alternatives or none of them. The constant is the need to govern whatever combination is actually in place.

Series conclusion: Governance is the constant. Everything else is a choice.

Read part 1 | Read part 2 | Read part 3 | Read part 4

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