KubeCon EU Q&A: Red Hat Engineer Bethany Griggs on Backstage

PARIS — Keeping developers happy and reducing the burden of their huge cognitive overload has been an important theme not only in the cloud native ecosystem but also in the software and IT industry at large in today’s ever-changing landscape.

So it’s no wonder that the Backstage open source portal framework billed as the open source framework for building developer portals, has rocketed into first place of the top 10 Cloud Native Computing Foundation projects with highest contributions from end user members.

At CNCF’s annual KubeCon+CloudNativeCon EU in Paris, we spoke with Bethany Griggs, a Red Hat Senior Software Engineer working on the Red Hat Developer Hub, which is based on BackStage. She is increasingly involved with Backstage. Griggs has an open source background: She served on the Node.js Technical Steering Committee and has also been an active contributor to the Node.js Release Working Group.

In our interview, Griggs talked about how she gravitated from the Node.js project to the Backstage project, discussing the architecture, core components, and the relevance of Backstage plugins. She also discussed the potential roadmap including improving the user experience for data scientists. She also covers some important themes and hallway conversations overheard at Backstagecon 2024, a KubeCon EU co-located conference.

How did you get your start in IT? 

From childhood, I was always interested in computers, gaming, and mathematics — but my first step into the software industry was when I took a gap-year internship at IBM as a teenager working in WebSphere.

In recent years, I have mostly worked upstream in the Node.js project — including leading major releases and participating in various spaces in the OpenJS Foundation. While at Red Hat, I’ve also had a focus on developer tooling for Node.js.

My first encounter with Backstage was through attending various Node.js conferences. I frequently heard from Node.js end-users at large enterprises who were exploring adopting Backstage for their operations. Backstage is built upon Node.js — so, it was in the intersection of two of my interests — developer tooling and Node.js, so I was compelled to explore. Incidentally, around this time, a new role became available in the Red Hat Developer Hub team — an offering that leverages Backstage — that I decided to take up.

At its heart, Backstage about pulling together all the tools, services, and documentation a developer needs in one developer portal as a single pane of glass.

Aside from being implemented in familiar technologies, I think the key strength from my time in the Node.js project is the experience of working in an upstream project community. The Node.js project is a huge, mature open source project with participants from many different organizations. Backstage is in its incubation and maturation phase — so I’m excited to be in the project while it’s going through its growth.

Is Backstage intended to replace traditional software development lifecycle (SLDC) toolchains in enterprises, which are extremely varied and highly personalized? Is the platform suitable for app development of all types, including three-tier and batch, or is there a specific sweet spot?

Backstage is an open source framework originally developed by Spotify to reduce the complexity overload of software development and operations. Backstage is designed to allow you to create a developer portal tailored to what you need it to be in your organization agnostic to the specific toolchains or workflows you’re using.

At its heart, Backstage is about pulling together all the tools, services, and documentation a developer needs in one developer portal as a single pane of glass. As a developer, I’ve experienced first-hand the cognitive overload that comes with working in a large organization — so I can see the value in the developer portal approach.

Could you cover the architecture of Backstage at a high level and explain the different components that constitute the platform?

The high-level architecture of Backstage can be described as three components — the Backstage core framework, Backstage plugins, and the Backstage application. Backstage core is the framework itself — and by extending this framework with plugins you can create a Backstage-based portal application tailored to your organization’s needs.

In terms of technologies, the frontend of Backstage is constructed using React, offering a customizable and extensible interface. For the backend, it typically uses Node.js to serve as a bridge to a range of plugins and integrations. These integrations allow Backstage to connect with the multitude of tools and services that may be used in your organization — like CI/CD pipelines, monitoring systems, and cloud resources.

How critical are Backstage plugins? What are the considerations and challenges behind developing custom plugins to support enterprise-level development?

Out-of-the-box, Backstage provides the scaffolding for building your custom developer portal. The added value comes from leveraging the plugin ecosystem to create a comprehensive portal to expose all the services and integrations a developer at your organization needs on a day-to-day basis.

Developing custom plugins for Backstage in an enterprise context involves understanding the platform’s architecture. Challenges include ensuring interoperability with various systems, balancing customization with standardization, and providing ongoing maintenance and support.

In terms of standardization, the Backstage project has recently initiated a Community Plugins Special Interest Group (SIG) which is building an open community home for Backstage plugins. This initiative will provide a streamlined process for managing and publishing plugins while promoting a culture of plugin contributions and support within the Backstage community.

Let’s talk about Backstagecon. What were the highlights of the technology, ecosystem, and community on that day from your perspective? What are the imminent challenges facing Backstage?  Lack of plugins for infrastructure was discussed for instance at the panel. Any comments on this in particular?

It was great to see such a large community of adopters, contributors, and enthusiasts together at BackstageCon EU, particularly for a framework that has just reached four years old. Indications of the maturation of the project were evident in the “The State of Backstage 2024” talk, which recapped the recent BEP [Backstage Enhancement Proposal] process, inspired by Kubernetes, illustrating the community’s commitment to open design decisions. Notable recent technical improvements celebrated included authentication enhancements in an effort for more secure defaults, declarative integration, and dynamic plugins.

Lots of discussions were happening in the hallway track — particularly around recommendations of how to deploy Backstage with Helm charts and operators. Perhaps the most common discussion was from platform engineering teams who are excited by Backstage but querying how they can implement it across their organizations in a way that maximizes the value. In the coming months and at future conferences, it’ll be interesting to hear about organizations’ adoption journeys.

Given the growing prominence of AI in various technologies, what’s in the roadmap for AI integration with Backstage? Additionally, is there anything else you’d like to mention about Backstage in general?

I expect to see an ecosystem of new plugins designed and developed to integrate with AI-enhanced services for activities such as code reviews, performance optimization, and security scanning. I can also envisage a ChatGPT-style interface for surfacing information from your developer portal. I see no reason why Backstage could not also serve as a portal not only for developers within an organization but also be expanded as a portal for the data scientists.

As a framework, I’m excited to see the Backstage project maturing and growing into a healthy community with a large number of adopters and contributors.

But, what is also exciting to see is the focus on reducing cognitive overload and complexity that developers in large organizations can experience. As an industry, in recent years, we’ve seen an increased focus on regulatory compliance — with mandates relating to supply-chain security efforts such as the creation of SBOMs. I believe these increased requirements on compliance and policy will only cement the value of developer portals such as those created with Backstage.