Platforms have become the panacea du jour for IT’s many ailments: they reduce cognitive load, eliminate friction, assure compliance, and while they’re at it also make applications portable. Not all platform initiatives deliver on those lofty promises, though, especially in large organizations. Based on a decade experience building platforms both as end-user and provider, this talk dives into what defines a platform, when internal teams should second-guess cloud providers’ interfaces, and how to grow platform usage inside your organization.