Understanding the P in IDP

Whether selling dog food or diamond rings, you need some software to keep up with the competition. The efficiency of the developers in an organization has become a determining factor in the competitiveness of the business. One of the tools organizations have started using to improve their software development is the introduction of IDPs.

ID on IDP stands for internal developer, which clearly identifies the target audience, the developers within an organization. However, the term IDP can be confusing, especially when we get to the letter P. Depending on the context, the P may refer to a platform or portal. So, what exactly is an internal developer platform? Let’s try to bring some order to the chaos by defining both.

Internal Developer Platform

An Internal Developer Platform is a self-service abstraction of all the tools, services, and processes that support an organization's software development. The main goal of an Internal Developer Platform is to ease the cognitive load of software developers. In other words, it is a unified platform that enables developers to focus on building quality software without worrying about infrastructure, security, or deployment.

Internal Developer Portal

Now that we better understand what an internal developer platform is, let's delve into Internal Developer Portal. An internal developer portal is a single pane of glass to an organization's Internal Developer Platform. It puts all the tools, services, and processes, as well as the underlying infrastructure, under one interface.

At a minimum, an Internal Developer Portal is a user interface, hence the name portal. However, the interface can also extend to uniform API access to the developer platform. (imagine a control plane for internal software development). The portal gives developers a single entry point to access all the necessary services to build software. It can also serve as a centralized hub for documentation, tutorials, and best practices.

An Internal Developer Platform is one of the essential tools for modern software development, and an Internal Developer Portal is its essential part. Stay tuned for more posts on IDPs. And if you want to be informed as they are published, use the bottom below to subscribe.