Continuous Delivery for Foundational Platforms

Platform teams frequently inherit systems that were never architected for their current scale, yet are so foundational that downtime can halt the business. Operating on these fragile foundations, teams face the daunting challenge of continuously shipping new features while scaling infrastructure significantly. Continuous delivery can feel risky in such critical scenarios—but avoiding it can stall progress, frustrate internal customers, and trap teams in endless rewrites that never materialize.

Drawing from his experiences leading foundational platform teams at AWS EC2 and Datadog, Ian Nowland will share practical strategies to safely implement continuous delivery, balancing reliability with innovation. Attendees will learn how to scale confidently, enhance developer productivity, and sustainably improve their platforms—even under immense pressure.