Building & Running a Serverless Platform: Beyond Infrastructure • Shilpa Nagavara • GOTO 2025

This presentation was recorded at GOTO Serverless 2025. #GOTOcon #GOTOserverless https://conferences.gotopia.tech/goto-serverless-bengaluru-2025 Shilpa Nagavara - Solutions Architect at Globalization Partners RESOURCES https://github.com/shilpaprabhun https://www.linkedin.com/in/shilpaprabhun ABSTRACT Building a robust platform on serverless extends beyond mere infrastructure; it's about creating a powerful integration platform, treated as a product for consumers including other engineering teams in the organization. We'll explore why this approach dramatically improves engineering efficiency, emphasizing "paved paths" while carefully avoiding over-generalization pitfalls. Adopting a deeply consumer-centric mindset from day one is crucial. We'll discuss how to engage diverse stakeholders through RFCs and collaborative input, avoiding the trap of building only for the initial use case. For running such a platform, we'll delve into critical operational considerations: implementing comprehensive security measures (user/M2M authorization, egress control), managing Total Cost of Ownership per consumer, and ensuring operational excellence. This includes robust CI/CD, observability, versioning strategies for code, APIs, and data, and building highly reliable, performant systems (addressing cold starts and concurrency). Finally, we'll cover fostering a culture of velocity to empower teams and prevent the emergence of costly "shadow” platforms. [...] TIMECODES 00:00 Intro 00:59 Key takeaways 02:30 3 categories of platforms 03:33 Terminology 04:38 1. Ideation 10:19 2., Construction 17:48 3. Operation 22:11 4. Readiness checklist 26:18 Outro Read the full abstract here: https://conferences.gotopia.tech/goto-serverless-bengaluru-2025/sessions/3867 RECOMMENDED BOOKS Camille Fournier & Ian Nowlan • Platform Engineering • https://amzn.to/41NELqG Sheen Brisals & Luke Hedger • Serverless Development on AWS • https://amzn.to/3W3Sw2f Adam Bellemare • Building Event-Driven Microservices • https://amzn.to/3WfNKfM Peter Sbarski • Serverless Architectures on AWS • https://amzn.to/3hJzEUM Michael Stack • Event-Driven Architecture in Golang • https://amzn.to/3G5e8ST Ford, Richards, Sadalage & Dehghani • Software Architecture: The Hard Parts • https://amzn.to/3v4pKQS James Urquhart • Flow Architectures • https://amzn.to/3Tyz8cY https://bsky.app/profile/gotocon.com https://twitter.com/GOTOcon https://www.linkedin.com/company/goto- https://www.instagram.com/goto_con https://www.facebook.com/GOTOConferences #Serverless #ServerlessPlatform #Lambda #ServerlessArchitecture #EventDrivenArchitecture #AWSServerless #ServerlessDevelopment #PlatformEngineering #SoftwareEngineering #Programming #TodayInTech #ShilpaNagavara CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP BONUS Join this channel to get early access to videos & other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs_tLP3AiwYKwdUHpltJPuA/join Looking for a unique learning experience? Attend the next GOTO conference near you! Get your ticket at https://gotopia.tech Sign up for updates and specials at https://gotopia.tech/newsletter SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL - new videos posted almost daily. https://www.youtube.com/user/GotoConferences/?sub_confirmation=1