Spotify Plugins for Backstage aimed at developer productivity

Spotify Backstage expanded its plugins catalog today with the addition of the Spotify Plugins for Backstage bundle, which helps development teams monitor software health and manage skillsets.

The new five-plugin bundle for the developer platform focuses on developer effectiveness, according to Austin Lamon, director and general manager of Backstage at Spotify. The bundle includes Pulse, a productivity and satisfaction survey tool; role-based access control, a no-code plugin to manage access; and Insights to monitor an enterprise's Backstage usage. Skill Exchange also connects talent within an organization, and Soundcheck codifies engineering best practices.

Spotify, known more broadly as a music streaming platform, created its Backstage developer platform in 2016. Open sourced in 2020, Backstage is now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubator project with more than 500 adopters, including Expedia Group, Telus and Bank of the West. Development teams can use Backstage to build self-service portals to manage assets and unify applications, documents, services and tools into a single UI. It includes a catalog for managing software, including microservices and libraries, templates to spin up new projects, and a catalog of open source plugins.

This is the first time Spotify has offered a subscription model for Backstage plugins. Out of those premium plugins, Skill Exchange and Soundcheck are the bundle's keys to developer success, said Holger Mueller, vice president and analyst at Constellation Research. The former reflects the gig working opportunity, while the latter aims to create a productive developer environment.

"Gone are the days when IDEs competed on core features like code creation speed, usability, build automation and more," Mueller said. "The competition has moved to adjacent areas -- ultimately to foster higher developer velocity. Spotify Backstage shows this with its latest innovations."