Skip to main content
Version: Release 24.1

Overview

What is an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)?​

Internal Developer Platform (IDP) stands as a comprehensive framework comprising of tools, services, and infrastructure. Its main purpose is to streamline the software development process for application developers.

Characteristics of an Internal Developer Platform:​

  • Self-Service Capabilities: It offers reusable tools and automated infrastructure operations.
  • Developer Self-Service: Developers can independently access cloud environments and perform operations.
  • Transparency: It provides visibility into underlying infrastructure elements such as CPU usage, dependencies, or Kubernetes setups.
  • Flexibility: The platform adapts to changes, maintaining loose coupling from the underlying infrastructure.

What is Internal Developer Portal?​

An Internal Developer Portal acts as the user interface or the ‘front-end’ of the IDP. It allows developers to interact with the toolkit that the IDP provides.

Key characteristics of an Internal Developer Portal are:

  • Enhanced User Experience: Providing a product-like experience for accessing resources.
  • Software Catalog: Serves as a metadata store providing essential data for operational purposes.
  • Workflow Automation: Empowering operations to execute workflows against the software catalog.
  • API-First Approach: Transitioning into a platform API, facilitating interaction with various components of an IDP.​

Here are a few providers of internal developer portals:

  • Backstage by Spotify: An open-source platform developed by Spotify that centralizes infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation.
  • Cortex by Palantir: Cortex is a portal solution offered by Palantir Technologies, focusing on infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation.

Why Both are Essential?​​

An Internal Developer Portal complements and enhances the Internal Developer Platform. While the Internal Developer Platform serves as the backend engine, the portal offers the user experience. Together, they optimize productivity, maintain quality standards, and streamline operations.

Here's the Gartner definition: “Internal developer portals serve as the interface through which developers can discover and access internal developer platform capabilities."

Digita.ai is introducing the Deploy plugin for Backstage. Now, let's look at what Backstage is all about.

What is Backstage?​

Backstage is an open source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy. Backstage is owned by Cloud Native Computing Foundation(CNCF).

Why Backstage?​

Backstage helps you to manage all your software components and documentation in a centralized location. It also allows seamless integration of new tools and services through plugins, making it the perfect platform to streamline the software development workflow. For more information, see What is Backstage.

Why Release Integration with Backstage?​

Through Release integration with Backstage, you can:

  • Seamlessly integrate your Backstage service with a Release application and instance, facilitating efficient release management.
  • Monitor recent releases for specific applications and access detailed information such as active releases, status, and release flow.

Release Plugin for Backstage​

The Release plugin consist of two plugins:

  • Frontend Plugin: The frontend plugin connects to backend plugin and displays the active releases and view the release flow. To configure the Release frontend plugin, see Release frontend plugin.

  • Backend Plugin: The Backend plugin makes API request to Digital.ai Release and processes the data for the frontend plugin. To configure the Release backend plugin, see Release backend plugin.

Deploy Plugin for Backstage​

You can now integrate the Deploy plugin into your Backstage application. For more information, see Deploy Integration with Backstage.