Kratix + Backstage: Upgrade Your Portal to a Platform

Your developer portal is not enough!

Organisations aiming for growth and efficiency require a fully automated internal developer platform, not just a centralised dashboard. The state of platform engineering report by Red Hat shared that the common challenges faced by organisations adopting platform engineering are workflow integration, security risks, and skills gaps.

The solution? An upgrade from a portal to a platform mindset.

Upgrading Backstage from an internal developer portal to an internal developer platform is the next step for modern DevOps teams. If you’re aiming to improve developer productivity and ensure security and compliance, this transition is crucial. 

The problem with traditional developer portals

Most organisations adopting Backstage as a developer portal quickly realise that while this tool centralises service catalogues and documentation, it doesn’t inherently solve workflow automation or infrastructure provisioning challenges.

This leads to some common pain points:

• Developers still rely on platform teams to provision resources manually.

• Scaling infrastructure remains a slow, ticket-based process.

• Governance and security policies are often enforced inconsistently.

A great example of this challenge comes from Spotify’s implementation of Backstage, which highlights that while service catalogues provide visibility, they don’t eliminate operational bottlenecks.

This is where the Kratix open-source framework enhances Backstage. Kratix brings workflows, allowing teams to evolve beyond service catalogues into a self-service internal developer platform where provisioning, compliance, and automation are built in from the start.

How Kratix turns Backstage into a scalable platform

So, how do you go from a portal to a platform? Let's look at each aspect in detail. 

From service discovery to service provisioning

Backstage helps developers discover and document services, making it easier to navigate complex systems. However, it doesn’t provide a way to request or provision resources directly. That’s where Kratix comes in.

Kratix transforms Backstage from a static service catalog into a fully functional self-service platform. Instead of just browsing available services, developers can instantly request a database, Kubernetes cluster, or CI/CD pipeline—without waiting for manual approvals. This automation removes bottlenecks and ensures infrastructure governance is built-in.

Syntasso Kratix Enterprise as a scalable platform

This YouTube video highlights Kratix's ability to streamline provisioning and provides a real-world example of this workflow in action. 

Scaling platforms with distributed workloads

Unlike traditional internal developer portals, the Kratix framework enables workload diversification over many clusters and cloud environments, allowing teams to expand services based on demand without operational constraints. 

For example, an organisation in the financial services sector can teach (define) Kratix how to schedule workloads on a Standard Kubernetes cluster, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) cluster and a Terraform destination cluster – using Destinations.

Built-in security and compliance

Manual approvals and governance policies often slow down delivery. With Kratix and Backstage, compliance is built into the platform, ensuring security without slowing development.

You may ask, how is compliance built in? 

Well, with Kratix’s architecture, you can define your organisation’s unique compliance requirement to automate these checks and integrate compliance tools directly into their software development pipelines and platforms.

Finally, a cluttered Backstage portal can overwhelm teams. However, with Kratix’s Promises supporting progressive disclosure—a design principle that simplifies the user experience by revealing information gradually, based on context or needs—developers only see what’s relevant to their workflow, eliminating unnecessary complexity and improving the developer experience. 

By displaying information in layers, progressive disclosure prevents developers from being bombarded with excessive details upfront. For instance, a frontend engineer might only see UI-related APIs, while a backend engineer accesses database and infrastructure services. Advanced settings and provisioning options remain hidden until explicitly needed, reducing cognitive load and preventing accidental misconfigurations.

With a well-structured Backstage portal, teams can work more efficiently, find what they need faster, and focus on delivering high-quality software without unnecessary distractions.

The impact of your internal developer platform

Upgrading from just a mere portal to an internal developer platform with Kratix enhances efficiency and strengthens governance. Organisations that make this shift go beyond automation and security to address cost optimisation, onboarding speed, and operational resilience—all while reducing cognitive load for developers.

A key advantage of this move is the ability to create custom self-service workflows that adapt to team needs. With Kratix, organisations can define workflows that provide teams with the resources they need while ensuring central governance.

Why this matters to DevOps leaders

For VPs of infrastructure, platform engineers, and SREs, the upgrade of a Backstage portal to a fully integrated internal developer platform isn’t just an upgrade—it’s a necessity.

Companies doing this: 

• Accelerate software delivery 

• Ensure compliance and governance at scale without slowing development

• Reduce platform maintenance overhead, freeing teams to focus on innovation

Companies are already adopting Kratix to break past the limitations of traditional developer portals.

Elevate your developer experience with Kratix

In this article, we explored how upgrading a Backstage developer portal to an internal developer platform with the Kratix framework helps organisations automate service provisioning and enforce compliance without slowing down innovation. 

By implementing insights from this article, DevOps leaders can create a more efficient developer experience.

Additionally, the Kratix Marketplace helps teams adopt the right tools for building scalable, self-service platforms.