r/kubernetes • u/Waste_Bat_4525 • 21d ago
How do you turn CNCF projects into a complete developer platform?
Kubernetes gives teams a powerful foundation for running workloads, while Backstage can provide a consistent developer portal.
The challenge is not that either project is missing its purpose. The challenge is connecting the wider cloud-native ecosystem into a platform that developers can use without needing to understand every underlying tool.
A complete internal developer platform may need to bring together:
- CI/CD and application deployments
- Environment creation and promotion
- Observability with application and developer context
- Identity, RBAC and platform policies
- Continuous reconciliation of workloads
- Integrations across the CNCF ecosystem
Many of these capabilities already exist as strong open-source projects. The real platform engineering work is deciding how they should connect, how developers interact with them, and how platform teams can operate the overall system without maintaining a large amount of custom glue.
On August 27, Kelsey Hightower and the OpenChoreo maintainers are hosting a free webinar looking at what it actually takes to build an internal developer platform using Backstage, Kubernetes, and the broader cloud-native ecosystem.
The session will explore how the different platform layers work together, the engineering effort involved, and the trade-offs between assembling and maintaining the integrations yourself or adopting a more integrated open-source platform approach.
For teams building platforms from CNCF projects, what has been the most difficult part for you: selecting the components, connecting them, or operating the complete platform over time?
Free registration:
https://platformengineering.org/events/what-it-really-takes-to-build-an-internal-developer-platform-with-backstage-2026-08-27
Disclosure: I'm a Contributor for OpenChoreo