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Why Infrastructure Needs Frameworks — Now

Erik Osterman
byErik OstermanCEO & Founder of Cloud Posse
Jan 10 2025

Now's the time to bring incredible developer experiences to infrastructure as code.

The modern cloud stack has come a long way.

And yet...

To do anything interesting in cloud infrastructure, you have to immerse yourself in a fragmented ecosystem of tools:

  • State management (e.g. S3 + DynamoDB)
  • Terraform backends
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Secret management
  • Policy enforcement
  • Drift detection
  • Account and region sprawl
  • DNS management
  • Tagging strategies
  • VPC architectures
  • Role assumptions
  • Upgrades and migrations

...and the list keeps growing.

You have to glue together dozens of tools and standards just to ship something to production.

You have to hire platform engineers just to manage the complexity.

You have to define modules, stacks, components, pipelines, runners, permissions, and environments — and then string them together with brittle scripts and tribal knowledge.

And good luck when something breaks. Or when you hand this off to a new team.

The Web Dev Comparison

By comparison, building modern web apps is a delight.

Web developers don't piece together fragmented systems and pray they work in production.

They use frameworks.

  • Next.js / React
  • Rails
  • Django

These tools give them:

  • Conventions and structure
  • Batteries-included developer experience
  • Versioned, testable, previewable builds
  • One-command deploys

They move fast. They move safely. They collaborate.

Why should infrastructure work any differently?

It shouldn't.

Why We Built Atmos

That's why we created Atmos.

Our mission is simple: bring modern developer experiences to cloud infrastructure.

How will we know we've succeeded? When:

  • "Platform Engineer" just becomes "Engineer"
  • Deploying a new service feels as straightforward as adding a new feature
  • Reusable patterns replace snowflake scripts
  • Any engineer can safely contribute to infrastructure
  • Promotion pipelines, compliance checks, and drift detection just work

All with one framework.

The Final Thought

Let's be blunt.

The core problem with Terraform today isn't Terraform.

It's that we don't have frameworks.

Atmos is the framework that makes Terraform and cloud infrastructure usable at scale. And the more companies adopt it, the more we can bring true developer experience to this space.

Building cloud infrastructure can — and should — be a delight.

Talk to an engineer. We'll show you what's possible. 🚀

Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
CEO & Founder of Cloud Posse
Founder & CEO of Cloud Posse. DevOps thought leader.

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