Leading Bold Migrations: How We’re Transforming Platform Engineering at Forter
Introduction
Let’s be honest—migrations are not the most glamorous part of engineering. They’re often messy, time-consuming, and require the kind of coordination that feels like herding cats. And the worst part? Incomplete migrations leave you juggling two systems instead of one, doubling the overhead. At Forter, we’ve been no strangers to the struggle of infrastructure migrations. Over the past few years, we’ve worked hard to keep up with industry changes and evolving needs, but we’ve faced a consistent challenge: moving fast enough to support innovation without derailing everyone else’s work.
At Forter, our Platform serves as the foundation for a diverse group of users and products—with 200+ engineers, data scientists, operations and analysts—working together to drive innovation. These teams rely on our platform to deliver their application changes to production efficiently and reliably. With 300+ users building a solid foundation, making migrations seamless and effective is essential to maintaining momentum and unlocking new opportunities across the organisation.
In 2023, we gave it our best shot. We created great documentation, simplified the migration processes, and encouraged teams to adopt the new features. Early adopters jumped in, excited to use our tools—even if they had to work through some missing features. But for many teams, the story was different. Roadblocks popped up, missing features slowed progress, and migrations often fizzled out before they even began.
In 2024, we shifted gears and made some big strides. We introduced “white glove” migrations and dedicated migration sprints. The Platform team partnered directly with application teams, tackling the migration work together. Adding missing features and removing road blocks real-time throughout the migration process. This has resulted in us migrating:
● Every team running at least one service in Kubernetes
● 50% of jobs to Argo Workflows
● Every team adopted our new O11y stack
● All applications transitioned to our new streaming stack
● All service integrated our new data compaction tool
Engineers across the company started seeing all the benefits of our new stack, solving long-standing pain points, and opening doors to new capabilities. But here’s the catch—it requires too much top-down coordination and we want to hit a higher gear. We felt like we were still stuck in migration limbo with:
● Endless conversation and guesswork about timelines and what team commitments would be in following quarters.
● Teams hesitated to commit any further ahead than 1 quarter.
● Teams pushing migrations back quarter after quarter.
● No clear way of tracking progress.
So, in 2025, we’re flipping the script: Platform Engineering is taking the lead on migrations. This isn’t just a shift in responsibility; it’s a cultural pivot. By making Platform Engineering the engine behind migrations, we’re streamlining the process, reducing friction, and empowering teams to focus on what they do best—building amazing products. The strategy to achieve this pivot is tailored specifically to Forter’s size and unique challenges. If Forter were 5x larger or smaller, it’s likely that a completely different approach would make sense. But for where we are today, this strategy strikes the perfect balance between structure, flexibility, and impact, enabling us to support innovation while minimising disruption.
Bold Migrations Are Our New Superpower
At Forter, we’re embracing a new mindset: being bold with migrations is not just necessary— it is a competitive advantage. A well-executed migration is like upgrading your car’s engine while still racing down the highway. Done right, it doesn’t just keep the wheels turning; it gives you a serious edge.
When our Platform team identifies technologies or processes that offer clear benefits, we don’t just dabble. We commit. Bold migrations are about decisively adopting what works, cutting out what doesn’t, and getting to a better state faster than anyone expects.
This isn’t just about speed; it’s about culture. We want to attract engineers who thrive on solving big challenges and driving meaningful change. Bold migrations signal to the world—and our team—that we’re serious about innovation and efficiency.
How we’re planning our Migrations for 2025
Prove it fits
Adopting new tech for the sake of it is a fast track to failure. Our goal isn’t just to implement the latest tools—we aim to eliminate the risk of maintaining two systems and ensure teams have the management support needed to prioritise migrations. To achieve this, we don’t start a migration until the new platform or tool has demonstrated strong product-market fit within Forter. This means real teams are using it, and we’ve seen measurable improvements that prove its value.
Take, for example, a 98% drop in deployment time one team saw when working with Platform to migrate to Kubernetes. Results like this make a compelling case for change, and they justify our bold approach to migrations. With data in hand, it’s far easier to get buy-in from Engineering Directors and Principal Engineers to greenlight the rollout. By focusing on proven benefits, we ensure migrations are backed by both confidence and alignment across the organisation.
Backwards Planning: Start with the Finish Line
We’ve all been there—scrambling to meet a deadline because planning started too late or completing an upgrade with the deadline looming far too close. Not anymore. Platform Engineering starts every migration by defining the target completion date upfront, then working backwards to create milestones and deliverables to validate it is achievable. This approach keeps us realistic, organized, and—most importantly— maintains momentum.
For example, let’s say our goal is to decommission the old jobs system by the end of the year. To make that happen, we first set a policy to prevent teams from adding new jobs to the old system. With 12 teams to migrate, we break it down: one team per month. Next, we work with stakeholders to prioritise the order—starting with Platform Engineering (to build expertise), followed by lower-risk systems, then tackling high-value systems, and finally addressing the long tail.
Once the plan is set, we share it with engineering leadership for visibility. This transparency ensures alignment and allows us to track progress effectively. If a team is delayed, we can quickly assess the impact—whether it’s shifting the plan, reallocating resources, or doubling down on priorities—to keep the migration on track and avoid slipping into January. This proactive approach ensures we deliver migrations on time, with minimal risk and maximum confidence.
Controlled Rollout Calendar
With backwards planning in hand, Platform Engineering maps out a detailed rollout schedule for all teams, services and active migrations. Each team is assigned a dedicated migration window, during which they join a Platform Engineering migration pod. These pods are small, focused subteams that tackle migrations collaboratively.
The pods handle the heavy lifting – managing the technical work, ensuring operational readiness and minimising disruptions – while giving Platform Engineers a unique opportunity to see first-hand the creative and innovative ways our Platform is used to build amazing products. Meanwhile, application teams are expected to show up, engage and provide their specific context, but without bearing the majority of the migration burden.
Once the schedule is created, it’s shared with and agreed upon by the technical leadership team, ensuring alignment across the organization. Assigning individual migration deadlines eliminates tedious checklists and minimizes last-minute scrambles. This approach allows us to track progress with clarity and set realistic goals for completing the migration.
How we’re executing our Migrations in 2025
Platform Engineering Owns the Heavy Lifting
Migration fatigue is real, so we’re reducing the burden on application teams. Platform Engineering handles 80% of the migration effort, leaving application teams to contribute the critical 20%: context and service-specific details. This balance lets application teams focus on building great products while we make migrations as painless as possible.
For instance, during the transition of Alerts from the old O11y stack, we automated the process and addressed any anomalies, ensuring a seamless experience for our engineering team.
The Platform team has significantly more leverage to drive these changes efficiently. By taking ownership of the process, we develop deep expertise, enabling us to proactively identify and resolve potential issues. Our ability to automate the migrations reduces manual effort and ensures consistency. Moreover, we minimise disruptions and avoid stop-and-start delays by adapting our systems to seamlessly address any gaps during the transition.
Day 1: Platform Engineering Runs the Show
Platform Engineering takes responsibility for Day 1 operations, including joining on-call rotations, fire drills, and chaos engineering exercises. Application teams shadow these activities to gain confidence, ask questions and to validate the final product. By the time the feature is handed over, application teams are not only equipped to manage it effectively but are also reassured that it has been rigorously validated under real-world conditions.
Day 2: Teams Take Over with Confidence
Once the new platform feature is stable, Platform Engineering leads operational exercises to prepare application teams for Day 2 operations. These include training, game days, and hands-on mentoring. Only when the team feels ready does Platform Engineering step back, leaving them fully equipped to manage the new system.
Sunsetting Old Systems
To stay focused, Platform Engineering takes a proactive approach to deprecating outdated systems, prioritising the deletion of those no longer providing value. If a system is still needed to support a small number of niche requirements, we hand its maintenance back to the consuming teams. This ensures our energy remains directed towards shared technologies that drive the greatest impact across Forter.
By concentrating on tools and processes that support the majority of our engineers, analysts, and data scientists, we maximize our influence and deliver meaningful improvements that empower teams to innovate. This approach keeps us aligned with our mission: We are Forter’s R&D force multiplier, accelerating research, development and operations by providing excellent self-service tools and platforms.
From Friction to Force Multiplier
Here’s the exciting part: migrations aren’t just technical tasks—they’re opportunities to redefine how we work and remove tooling which adds friction. With Platform Engineering leading the charge, we’re transforming migrations from a source of frustration into a force multiplier for innovation.
We know it won’t always be easy. But we are striving to be able to say:
“We started like everyone else—slow and clunky at migrations. But now, they’re a core strength that drives innovation and unlocks value across our organization.”
That’s the story we’re building at Forter. It’s about becoming a company that doesn’t just adapt to change but thrives on it.
If you’re someone who’s excited by bold, impactful migrations—and the opportunity to reshape how engineering teams work—maybe Forter is the place for you.
Here’s to a year of bold moves and even bolder results.
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