Spotify plans to launch a product marketplace on its open-source software engineering platform Backstage by the end of the year, the company announced earlier this month.
The digital streaming company partnered with cloud container software provider and IBM subsidiary Red Hat to launch the service, which will also align Spotify developer tools with open-source solutions from VMware and other tech providers, Meg Watson, head of product for Backstage at Spotify, told CIO Dive.
Backstage’s evolution as a mission-critical tool among Spotify’s developer teams and enthusiasm in the open-source community led to its commercial release, Watson said.
Spotify engineered an in-house portal to bring infrastructure tooling, services and documentation onto a single interface and leveraged its innovation to deliver an enterprise-grade DevOps platform in 2020. In addition, customers can purchase a subscription bundle of five developer plugins engineered by Spotify teams.
American Airlines adopted Backstage to support developers in a multi-cloud ecosystem that pairs Azure and IBM Cloud Foundry, according to Spotify, and Toyota Motor North America built an internal development platform on AWS using Backstage.
Currently, more than 2,000 organizations are using the platform, Spotify said. It's a 400% increase since the start of the year with early adopters including travel company Expedia and fintech Stash.
In-house tech hits the market
Tailoring an in-house application for broader use requires refinement.
As companies build and deploy technology across the enterprise, in-house engineering teams often create bespoke solutions tied directly to specific business needs. Occasionally, those solutions have industrywide applications.
Capital One developed a cloud data toolkit and launched a software division last year that brought its Slingshot data management solution to market.
As the company saw other enterprises grappling with similar cloud data ecosystem challenges, it was a natural evolution to bring tools built and scaled in-house to market, the company said at the time.
Slingshot grew out of data and cloud management lessons learned by Capital One engineers over a period of years and the company has continued to upgrade its capabilities.
Spotify is following a similar script. In addition to standing up the product marketplace, the company announced several enhancements designed to ease adoption this month, including a codeless declarative plugin integration tool.
Most companies deploy Backstage on-prem as a self-hosted portal that integrates with existing infrastructure, Watson said.
The company is testing a feature that will automate parts of the installation process. Backstage Quickstart will be released to a small group of testers in November and made publicly available in early 2024, the company said.
