What’s next for Backstage and the Spotify plugin bundle

Author
Meg Watson, Spotify
Published
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tl;dr: The Spotify team is launching a commercial Roadmap Webinar series beginning in May. We’ve been busy since launching the Spotify Plugins for Backstage bundle subscription in December, and we’re excited to share what we’re building next for Backstage and the bundle. Sign up for our commercial roadmap webinar on May 9.

Since we last spoke

It’s been a busy few months since we launched Spotify Plugins for Backstage into public beta back in December. Since then, we’ve been busy welcoming new customers and improving the bundle based on the feedback we’re hearing from you. We’ve learned a lot and are in active development on more than a few exciting products. We can’t wait to share them with you soon!

We’re excited to highlight some recent updates for our Soundcheck plugin in particular. Since launch, we’ve released two new features aimed at making it easier to get up and running with the plugin while also improving your ability to take action on the valuable insights the plugin provides. Most notably, we recently released a Fact Framework and third-party integrations. The Fact Framework allows Soundcheck to collect facts (un-opinionated information) about an entity in the software catalog. Facts are made available to Soundcheck through fact collectors. For example, the GitHub fact collector extracts one or more facts about GitHub projects/repositories. Soundcheck can also be extended by registering additional fact collectors. This enables adopters to extend Soundcheck in ways relevant to their organization, systems and infrastructure.

Together, these two features provide a clearer onramp to navigate checks using best practices (tested and proven at Spotify). Additionally, these new releases will make it easier to expand your programs over time through a growing library of out-of-the-box integrations with first and third-party tools, like the Backstage Software Catalog, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Gerrit.

What we’ve learned

In addition to the improvements we’re making to the plugins themselves, we’re also excited to share some customer insights from the past few months.

  • The Spotify plugins help companies adopt Backstage successfully: We’ve really enjoyed speaking with current and prospective Backstage adopters around the world on how these plugins can help advance their developer experience goals. We’re seeing incredible interest for the plugin bundle across all industries, organization sizes, and levels of maturity with Backstage. In many cases with companies early in their Backstage journey, we’re hearing that Spotify's plugins are integral to moving forward with adoption.
  • We have an opportunity to provide deeper opinionation: We’re excited to hear partners asking for more guidance from Spotify as it pertains to both Backstage and the plugin bundle. We’re working to establish stronger signaling within the products and through documentation to make it easier to onboard, leverage best practices, and reduce time-to-value.
  • People want more visibility into their Backstage usage: Customers struggle to understand what users are doing in their Backstage instance and are seeking better tools to measure and monitor, particularly during key adoption phases (for example, encouraging developers to use Backstage frequently and consistently within their organization). We’re excited for the role the Insights plugin is playing here, and looking forward to sharing more features for Insights soon.

What’s next from Spotify

And we’re just getting started! You are invited to join our very first Roadmap Webinar on May 9 at 10:00 am EST to hear more about the next steps for Spotify Plugins for Backstage and our commercial offerings. We hope to see you there!

Learn more about the webinar here or sign up for a Spotify Plugins for Backstage demo to get a closer look at the plugins.