A Platform Mindset - by Marcus Fontoura

Book Synopsis

Marcus Fontoura's career, and indeed this book, has largely been about the ethos needed to build powerful platforms. A tech platform is a reusable system that implements a core piece of functionality, such as identity. In this case, an identity platform provides a solution for users to log-in to multiple services. Developers gain agility when using platforms, as they don't need to implement the whole system from scratch and can focus on the new, differentiating innovations. A platform, however, is an external dependency. Thus, using a platform implies teams taking a dependency on other teams. This requires coordination and collaboration. It is impossible to build the large-scale, complex systems of today without relying on platforms and their multiplier effect to build a scalable identity solution once and reuse it many times in all the company's services. This means that modern technology organizations need to be highly collaborative, with all their sub teams interacting in an open way, in which ideas are generated, developed, and propagated in an environment that empowers the developers to be themselves and let their creativity flourish. Platforms are the seeds of innovation and require their daily dose of creativity and collaboration to blossom into the systems that impact our lives and society in a positive way. Fontoura truly believes we can create a better world through technology and a platform mindset is the foundation.

About the Author

Marcus Fontoura is currently in his second tenure as Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, where he works as CTO for Azure Core.

Most recently, he was the CTO at Stone (2022-2025), where he led the engineering organization, focused on building highly efficient financial platforms and an amazing engineering culture. He continues to serve as an advisor to the company.

Previously, in his first tenure as Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft (2013-2022), Marcus worked as the chief architect for Azure Compute and led the Azure efficiency team. Marcus also had posts at Google, Yahoo, and IBM Research.