Platform engineering is the discipline of building internal toolchains that provide developers with resources to optimally support their work. The platform team standardizes the development process by publishing services to an internal developer platform.
While the platform implements the mechanisms that fulfill developer requirements, such as self-service access and automated deployment pipelines, an additional layer is needed to enable convenient developer interactions with the platform: an internal developer portal.
The internal developer portal allows developers to discover and use the services available in an IDP without requiring knowledge of how the platform is implemented.
In this article, we explore in detail the differences between internal developer portals and internal developer platforms, including where and how they overlap. We explain when each of these approaches should be used and how they can be combined to optimize platform engineering.
What is an internal developer platform?
An internal developer platform is a resource that provides tools, processes, and systems for managing the software delivery lifecycle and implementing DevOps best practices. Platforms are managed by dedicated platform teams responsible for ensuring developers are equipped to efficiently complete their tasks.
Software teams often struggle to standardize processes and grant developers the autonomy they need. Platforms address this challenge by creating a single destination for safely running workflows and performing self-service interactions. Not only does this increase productivity, it also offers greater scalability as your toolset and teams grow.
Key features of internal developer platforms include:
- DevOps process consolidation: The platform standardizes processes for everyone involved with DevOps, including developers, operators, and product managers.
- Self-service infrastructure access: Developers can use the platform for self-service infrastructure operations (e.g., accessing production logs or starting new staging environments).
- Workflow automation: Platforms facilitate workflow automation by integrating different tools and processes into a cohesive platform.
- Easy access to observability data: The platform can facilitate access to logs and metrics, then provide notifications when events occur.
- Continuous governance: Platforms boost compliance by ensuring all operations are performed through a standardized platform, enabling ongoing policy enforcement.
- Cloud cost optimization: Platform-centric development helps optimize cloud costs by reducing infrastructure waste and enabling the platform team to control resource utilization.
Platforms have the overarching aim of unifying all development processes within a single platform. Developers, operators, and other stakeholders can use the platform to interact with infrastructure and execute automated workflows that improve their ability to work autonomously.
Without a platform, developers would need direct access to cloud accounts in order to apply infrastructure changes; by contrast, platforms act as a gateway so platform teams can expose only those resources developers actually require. This upholds continuous security, governance, and compliance by ensuring developers only work with approved infrastructure components, using standardized processes.
Internal platforms also play a key role in democratizing development tasks so they are accessible to all engineers. Few developers are trained in infrastructure and cloud-native operations, but increasingly, they need to interact with these resources when building or testing new software features. Converting complex processes into self-service platform actions ensures everyone can use them effectively, regardless of their primary skill set or previous experience.
What is an internal developer portal?
Internal developer portals allow developers to find and utilize the tools and resources delivered via the developer platform. The portal provides a dedicated interface that acts as the platform’s entry point so that developers don’t need to deal with the complexities of how the platform is implemented.
Separating the portal from the platform has several benefits for both developers and the platform team:
- Streamlined tool discovery: Portals provide a service catalog for the platform’s resources and tools, enabling developers to find what is available quickly and easily.
- Simpler developer experience: Developers use the portal’s simplified interface to achieve their aims, without needing to learn the intricacies of how the platform works.
- More versatile platform ops with a separate frontend and backend: Maintaining the portal independently of the rest of the platform enhances platform ops. For example, the platform team can efficiently change how processes are implemented, without affecting existing developer workflows.
By adopting this model, developers can conveniently interact with the platform through the interface provided by the portal. Compared to using an platform alone, this simplifies the developer experience and makes it easier for platform teams to control which services are made available.
Choosing between internal developer portals and internal developer platforms
Internal developer portals and developer platforms are complementary concepts, supporting one another to drive improvements to developer experience and the software delivery lifecycle.
Let’s look at how they differ:
Portal | Platform | |
| Audience | Development teams | Everyone involved with software delivery |
| Purpose | Centralizes developer access to platform capabilities | Implements tools and processes to achieve DevOps objectives |
| Features | Service catalog, CLI/web interfaces for platform tools, monitoring dashboards, documentation, and workflow automation | CI/CD pipelines, IaC implementations, infrastructure and configuration management, and any other tools the DevOps cycle requires |
| Interaction method | Unified interface | Direct interactions with tools |
| Standardization | Ensures developers follow a single optimized path with minimal distractions | Enforces consistent toolchains and continuous compliance |
| Benefits | Easier developer access to self-service IDP capabilities, increasing autonomy and concealing complexity | Simplifies implementation of DevOps best practices to accelerate high-quality software delivery |
To summarize, the platform is the backend that implements the complex processes for managing infrastructure, configuration, and automation tools. The portal wraps the platform with an intuitive, easy-to-access interface that lets developers find and interact with the platform’s catalog of capabilities.
Why you need an internal developer portal and an internal developer platform
Platform teams often make the mistake of trying to choose between internal developer portals or platforms. Yet in reality, there’s no choice to be made: You need both a portal and a platform to support modern DevOps workflows. The platform contains the moving parts, but without a portal, it’s just a mixed-up toolbox that developers may struggle to use.
Operating a portal and platform in conjunction provides the strongest support for your software delivery lifecycle. This model allows the platform team to continually evolve how processes are implemented within the platform, while exposing a convenient, stable portal for developers to interact with. The portal conceals complexity and empowers all developers with the self-service capabilities they need—even those who aren’t well versed in the tools and workflows the platform uses behind the scenes.
Many teams leverage the open source Backstage (first developed by Spotify) to build their internal developer portals. Others opt to build portals independently.
Our users have integrated Torque’s developer platform functionality into their Backstage-based portals, while others leverage Torque’s native self-service catalog and other tools as a portal from which developers access resources and tools created via the platform.
To learn more, watch this brief demo of Quali Torque:
Summary
Internal developer portals are interfaces to the services provided by internal developer platforms. The two mechanisms complement each other and together form a framework for automating, standardizing, and accelerating software delivery processes.
Platform teams should build IDPs that allow for robust implementation of DevOps best practices, then create portals to facilitate simple developer interactions with the platform’s service catalog.
To experience Quali’s developer platform and portal functionality first-hand, visit the Quali Torque playground.