SKAO Technology Watch

Introduction

The SKAO Technology Watch is part of an ongoing initiative by the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) to showcase, monitor, and promote the adoption of technologies that support the Observatory’s software, infrastructure, and data driven development strategies.

What is the SKAO Technology Watch?

It includes a catalogue of tools, platforms, and practices used by SKAO software engineering teams, organised through a visual Technology watch. The watch tracks the maturity and alignment of each entry across software engineering, platform infrastructure, collaboration, and data processing domains.

Rather than attempting to cover every available tool, the watch highlights a curated set of technologies that have been evaluated based on SKAO's goals for secure, scalable, and maintainable engineering practices.

How it is created

TBD

Quadrants and Rings

Quadrants

The watch is divided into four thematic quadrants, which reflect SKAO’s core areas of technological development:

• Software Engineering & Development Practices
  Tools, languages, and frameworks that support software engineering for scalable, maintainable, and testable softwares.

• Infrastructure & Platform Engineering
  Platforms, orchestration tools, and infrastructure management technologies used to deploy, operate, and monitor systems at scale.

• Collaboration Platform
  Systems and practices that support agile workflows, documentation, team collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

• Data Processing
  Tools, frameworks, and patterns for handling large scale data workflows.

Rings

The watch also categorises technologies by their adoption stage using concentric rings:

• Adopt
  Mature and widely used tools recommended for use in SKAO projects.

• Trial
  Promising technologies under active evaluation. Suitable for pilot projects or trial rollouts.

• Hold
  Tools not recommended for new projects, often due to maturity, relevance, or security issues.

Contributing to the SKAO Technology Watch

TBD