Backstage is an open source platform for building developer portals that unifies all tooling, services, apps, data, and documentation with a single consistent UI. It allows developers to focus on their work by providing a centralized location to create software, manage what they own, and explore the entire software ecosystem. Backstage has a customizable, extensible plugin architecture built with modern technologies to make it easy to develop for and contribute to developer portals in a cloud-agnostic, vendor-neutral way.

1. Francesco Corti
Product Manager
25+ years of experience in IT
Developer at heart
Open Source Enthusiast
Public Speaker & Author

2. Backstage is an open platform for
building developer portals.
Created at Donated to

3. Unifies all your tooling, services, apps,
data, and docs with a single, consistent UI
Makes sense of everything in your
ecosystem, regardless of how and where
individual components are running
Let developers focus on what they do best
(leading to much less activity in #aaargh
Slack channel)
A developer portal =
one frontend for your
entire infrastructure

4. Backstage is a Collection of Libraries to
build Developer Portals.
With Backstage a developer creates an
Application implementing a Developer
Portal.
A Developer Portal is a Web Portal
targeting the Techie Persona (developers,
data engineers, etc.).
A Web Portal is a website bringing
information from diverse sources together
in a uniform way. (wikipedia)
What Backstage is
(for IT professionals)
Developer Portal
Service Service Service
…

5. An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is a
Software Platform targeting the Developer
Persona of an Organization, often
implementing self-service DevOps (or
other targeted services).
A Software Platform implements one or
more services and often includes a Web
Application providing the proper End-User
Experience.
IDPlatform vs IDPortal
Developer Portal
Service Service Service
…
Dev Portal
Dev Platform

7. Backstage lets any developer:
❏ Create new software in seconds,
aligned to your best practices
❏ Manage all the software they own
in one centralized location
❏ Explore the entire software
ecosystem, enabling
collaboration across your org

8. Backstage has a customizable,
extensible plugin architecture
❏ Built with modern technologies
and common frameworks.
❏ Makes it easy to develop for and
contribute to your dev portal.
❏ Cloud-agnostic and
vendor-neutral.

9. A sustainable OSS model
By building a developer portal on an
open platform, you can:
❏ Leverage common integrations
and best practices developed
with the community
❏ Customize those integrations
to suit your unique needs
Backstage community
Your company
Contributions Contributions

10. Plan for Paid Plugins
Beta launch:
❏ Role Based Access Control Use
roles to control access to actions
and data in Backstage.
❏ Skill Exchange Spotify’s
marketplace for short-term
opportunities in R&D.
More plugins to come later in 2022!

11. Great resources
Official WebSite:
backstage.io
Community Sessions:
github.com/backstage/community
Discord:
https://discord.gg/MUpMjP2

12. ❏ Creating your own IDP
❏ The new Developer Experience
(through an IDP)

24. Do you really need
to develop
every integration?
100+
Plugins*
(*) Plugins that we are aware of

25. Demo
Adding an existing plugin

26. What the “new” DevEx looks like
IDE Version
Control
System
Backstage
> >

27. Story:
A new
Developer
Joining

45. Onboarding
Creating
Managing sw entities
Developing
Documenting
Finding
Onboarding
Creating
Managing sw entities
Developing
Documenting
Finding

46. 1,000+
Adopters*
(*) Companies that we are aware of

47. Backstage is the 4th CNCF project per authors
21k+
Starred
100+
PRs/week
10k+
Discord
Members

48. Francesco Corti
Senior Product Manager
@ Spotify
Happy Developers make Happy Code
https://backstage.io
https://backstage.spotify.com