Hey everyone! I'm curious to know if anyone has set up an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) in their organization. If you have, could you share which tools you used, any challenges you faced, and the pros and cons of your experiences?
2 Answers
In my experience, IDP often refers to identity providers like Okta, Keycloak, or Active Directory. With all these different meanings for acronyms, keeping track of it all can be a full-time job!
I've been focusing on this in a few of my roles. IDP is really a key goal for platform engineering teams! For one project, we used TwitterServer to gather data and linked it to an in-house portal that included templates for deploying new services. Then, I moved to a place using Backstage as their IDP. What made it work was having paved road solutions available directly in Backstage. Users could fill out a template in Backstage, which would open a PR, and once reviewed, it triggered a pipeline to deploy changes. The main challenge I found was that setting up an IDP requires having a solid ecosystem in place first. It takes time, focus, and established standards. For many engineers, wrapping their heads around this concept can be a tough sell!
Great explanation! It’s crucial to have all the automation and templating set up beforehand, and the UI aspect of the IDP really helps make it self-serving for the devs.