Paving Golden Paths with Internal Developer Platforms

Talk delivered at the Amsterdam Tech Enthusiasts/ Cloud-Native meetup on 10 May 2023.

Transcript

1. 1 Paving Golden paths with Internal Developer Platforms Gopal Ramachandran
2. goposky Engineer, Solution Architect Cloud-native platforms Devoteam Gopal Ramachandran
3. Agenda • Platforms • Project Unox • Backstage
4. Platforms
5. What is a platform in our context? It is the complete collection of tools and technology glued together and maintained by a platform engineering team, to facilitate a self-service “golden path” for developers.
8. Platform → Developer enablement
9. Platform → Developer enablement Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
10. Creative tech for Better Change 10
11. But Why build an IDP?
12. • Speed Accelerate product development by offloading responsibility for common services and components • Standardization Streamline your development environment through consolidation and consistent experiences Why build an IDP? Cost
13. Project Unox
14. Vision - Project Unox To create a solution showcase of a fully self-service platform for developers to build and deploy cloud-native applications securely using best-of-breed techniques.
15. cloud-native gitops self-service developer platform portal backstage argocd azure kubernetes github Project Unox
16. Platform capabilities • Portals and APIs • “Golden path” templates and docs • Automation for build, test and delivery • Development environments such as hosted IDEs and remote connection tools • Observability • Infrastructure: Compute, Network, Storage • Data and Messaging • Identity and secrets • Security and policy • Artifact storage
17. Project Unox - Building blocks
18. Project Unox - Building blocks Project Unox - Building blocks
19. Creative tech for Better Change 19 Our DevOps toolchain
20. Cloud-native landscape has exploded
21. Backstage is a tool/platform to build a developer portal. Developer portal A developer portal is a central go-to place for developers, engineers, and managers when they need to learn about their ecosystem and contribute to it. It allows teams to focus on delivering code faster and with greater efficiency.
22. Tooling sprawl ITSM CMDB
23. Tooling sprawl ITSM CMDB
24. Key features: • Software Catalog • Scaffolder • TechDocs What is Backstage?
25. • Created by Spotify, and open sourced (CNCF) • A platform or framework to build developer portals • A React/Node app built on top of the core libraries • Highly extensible with plugins and customizable What is Backstage?
26. Quick demo
27. • For developers • For platform engineers • For engineering managers/ product owners • For everyone It is not… • A replacement for existing tools Backstage is…
28. Platform attributes • Product mindset • Developer experience • Documentation • Self-service • Reduce cognitive load • Optional and composable • Secure by default
29. Thank you.