Backstage Chronicles: Season 3 of The Art of Modern Ops Podcast
Explore 'Backstage Chronicles: Season 3 of The Art of Modern Ops Podcast' for in-depth discussions with industry leaders on how Backstage revolutionizes developer operations. Gain insights from real-world implementations and learn how this open-source platform is shaping the future of platform engineering.
Since its inception in 2020, Backstage has revolutionized the way developers work. This open-source platform for building developer portals isn't just another tool—it's a game-changer. As of December 2022, Backstage has been adopted by more than 600 companies, including industry giants such as Netflix, LinkedIn, and American Airlines. With a community of over 2000 contributors and 2300 users, Backstage has become an integral part of the platform engineering movement.
We recently created the Flux CD Backstage plugin and were selected as an inaugural launch partner for the Backstage Marketplace sponsored by Spotify.
This season on 'The Art of Modern Ops Podcast: The Backstage Chronicles,' we dive deep into the stories behind Backstage’s adoption. Mohamed F. Ahmed, VP of Developer Platform, sits down with some of the platform's early adopters. The goal of these conversations was to understand how the organization came about choosing Backstage, what problems it solved, and what challenges it faced. We've gathered all the episodes of Season 3 right here for you. Happy listening!
Episode 1: First-Hand Experiences on Building Developer Platforms
Guest Speaker: Taras Mankovski - CEO, Frontside Software
In this episode, we feature Taras Makovski, CEO of Frontside Software. Frontside Software is a consulting company specializing in enhancing the developer experience of internal development platforms and providing enterprise support for Backstage. Drawing on his extensive experience working with clients, Taras shares valuable learnings and insights.
Episode 2: Unveiling the World of Platform Engineering for Automotive Industry”
Guest Speaker: Andre Wanlin, Software Engineer at Keyloop
In this episode, our guest is Andre Wanlin, a Software Engineer from Keyloop. Keyloop is at the forefront of transforming the automotive industry through cutting-edge technology. Andre has played a pivotal role at Keyloop, where he has successfully implemented Backstage to create a developer portal. This portal significantly simplified the complexities software engineers face in managing applications and infrastructure.
Episode 3: 3 Fundamental Usecases to Backstage
Guest Speaker: Olivier Liechti, Co-Founder & CTO Avalia Systems
This episode features a conversation with Olivier Liechti, the Co-Founder and CTO of Avalia Systems, a consulting firm specializing in software analytics. Avalia Systems harnesses data from software development and operations to deliver insightful analysis for diverse applications and users. Olivier delves into his experience with Backstage, discussing its advantages and focusing on the three most common use cases he has encountered in his consultancy work with various companies.
Revolutionize Your Platform Engineering Practice with Weave GitOps
Weave GitOps Assured can help organization kickstart their platform engineering practice, enhancing developer productivity and streamlining Kubernetes workflows.
LEARN MOREEpisode 4: Scaling & Improving Software Team’s Efficiency with an IDP
Guest Speaker: Søren Mathiasen, Software Engineer at Kapeta.
In this episode, we are joined by Soren Mathiasen, a software engineer who recounts his journey of introducing Backstage at two rapidly growing companies. He describes how Backstage has enhanced the productivity and performance of their software development teams. Tune in to discover his valuable insights and experiences!
Episode 5:Centralizing Knowledge with Service Catalog
Guest Speaker: Antoine Tanguy, Lead Engineering Ops at Brevo
The Backstage Service Catalog acts as a comprehensive hub, storing crucial data about a software system’s various services. In this episode, we discuss with Antoine Tanguy, Lead Engineering Ops at Brevo, his experience deploying the Backstage service catalog at Brevo (previously known as SendInBlue). He recounts his journey of exploring Backstage as a potential solution, the obstacles he faced during implementation, and the significant benefits it has brought to the company's engineering team.
Episode 6: How Developer Portals Help Solve Discoverability and Standardization
Guest Speakers: David Tuite, Roadie’s CEO, and Martina Iglesias Fernández, Roadie’s CTO
As companies grow and evolve, their engineering departments typically expand alongside them. This expansion often brings new tools, software, and a wealth of tribal knowledge. However, this growth can lead to challenges, particularly in learning and adopting existing technologies, APIs, and processes within the organization. This situation can prompt developers to start using their own tools and processes, which may aggravate issues related to discoverability and standardization.
In this engaging episode, Mohamed interviews two prominent figures from Roadie, a company offering a hosted and managed Internal Developer portal based on Spotify’s Backstage. The guests, David Tuite, CEO of Roadie, and Martina Iglesias Fernández, CTO, will share their insights on how they've enabled customers to adopt and utilize Backstage through their SaaS solution effectively.
Episode 7: Improving Security and Collaboration with Backstage
Guest Speaker: Sami Ur Rehman, Manager & Principal Software Engineer at Runa
In this installment, Mohamed converses with Sami Ur Rehman, who holds a dual role as Manager and Principal Software Engineer at Runa, a company specializing in payment networks. Sami, having faced issues with scalability and maintainability at his previous job, was searching for a system that could streamline documentation and design operations.
The adoption of Backstage at Runa marked a turning point. With Backstage in place, Sami witnessed substantial enhancements in the company's overall transparency and improved teamwork and project management efficiency. Moreover, the security team at Runa leveraged Backstage to refine their incident and vulnerability management approaches. Tune in to learn more about his adoption journey.
Backstage & the Flux CD Plugin
The Flux CD plugin for Backstage (also available on the Spotify Marketplace for Backstage) helps teams easily understand the state of Flux resources across their Backstage entities. It simplifies the process of creating, deploying, and managing GitOps-enabled applications and infrastructure, enhancing the developer and platform team experience as a result.
Watch this Office Hours Webinar, where Steve Fraser and Joe Dahlquist, explain how the Flux CD plugin for Backstage provides comprehensive visibility into GitOps workflows directly from the Backstage portal.
Contact us today to learn more about our GitOps solutions and how they can be used with Backstage to enhance the developer experience.
A Beginner’s Guide to Platform Engineering
In this guide, we delve into the fundamentals of platform engineering: what it is, how it works, and the benefits of this new approach.
