Platform Engineering & Backstage: A Chicken And Egg Story
Platform Engineering, Thursday, July 24th, 2025
Platform engineering is at the heart of modern software delivery. It is squarely in the spotlight. But take a step back - and you'll find a situation that reminds me of the old chicken-and-egg question: Which came first, the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) or the platform that enables it?
Specifically, is it the emergence of IDPs that led organizations to tools like Backstage, or did Backstage's rise in developer portal popularity drive the IDP trend?
Either way, Backstage has made the top 30 list of the Linux Foundations fastest growing projects. That is no mean feat when you consider it is among the likes of Linux itself, Kubernetes, Open Telemetry, Argo, etc. So while the usual complaints about pure open source being clunky, hard to use, scalability, etc., people and organizations are using it like mad. Not saying it doesn't have its warts, but we will look at that later.
Let's explore how Backstage - Spotify's open-source portal framework - has risen to prominence, how it's become a bedrock of platform engineering, and how it's fueling the IDP movement itself.