What if you could deploy without having to fight cloud configurations, security groups, and Terraform scripts? Developers are responsible for writing application code, testing features, and deploying services, but a large portion of their time is also spent on infrastructure tasks. This means that instead of focusing on delivering new features or optimizing application performance, they often get pulled into provisioning compute instances for their workloads, configuring security groups for networking, and debugging failed deployments within CI/CD pipelines.
These tasks require deep knowledge of cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure, and an understanding of security policies such as IAM role management and VPC configurations, alongside familiarity with automation tools like Terraform, Ansible, and CloudFormation.
As a result, managing infrastructure becomes a bottleneck for most teams, slowing down development cycles.
Developers need infrastructure to deploy new software or applications, run automated test environments, or scale workloads during traffic spikes. However, setting up infrastructure manually through Terraform scripts, CLI commands, or cloud consoles takes significant time and effort. While DevOps teams support these requests, the volume of infrastructure needs grows as development teams scale. Over time, the increasing demand for new environments, databases, and networking changes overloads DevOps teams, delaying infrastructure availability and slowing down deployments.
This is where Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) come in.
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is a layer between developers and infrastructure that automates resource provisioning, standardizes deployments, and enforces security policies. It provides a structured platform where developers can deploy applications without manually configuring cloud resources, networking, or access control. Instead of repeatedly writing the same Terraform code for provisioning infrastructure that has likely been written multiple times within the team, organization, and even externally, developers interact with an IDP’s predefined workflows, templates, and APIs.
This allows them to request and deploy infrastructure on demand without managing configurations manually, and removes dependencies on DevOps teams, ensures consistency across environments, and speeds up the entire software delivery process.
IDPs also address major developer pain points:
For example, without an IDP, a backend team might build a new authentication service, unaware that the security team has already developed a similar solution. With a structured platform, developers can quickly locate what they need, reducing redundancy and ensuring teams reuse existing services instead of rebuilding them from scratch.
For example, instead of logging into AWS CloudWatch for logs, Terraform for infrastructure changes, and Jenkins for pipeline execution, developers can access all relevant data within the IDP’s unified dashboard, improving efficiency and reducing cognitive load.
Now that we know managing infrastructure manually slows down software development and adds extra work for DevOps teams, the next step is understanding how Internal Developer Platforms solve this problem. Instead of developers spending time provisioning compute instances, setting up networking, or fixing failed deployments, an IDP automates these tasks and provides a structured way to deploy applications.
An IDP sits between developers and cloud services, handling infrastructure provisioning, security enforcement, and deployment automation. Whether it’s creating EC2 instances, managing IAM roles, or setting up Kubernetes clusters, the IDP ensures these tasks follow standardized workflows and security policies so developers don’t have to configure everything manually.
If you were to build an IDP from scratch using Backstage, you would quickly realize that Backstage alone does not provide infrastructure automation. It is a framework for creating an internal developer portal, but it does not include native capabilities for provisioning infrastructure, managing CI/CD, or enforcing security policies. To turn Backstage into a fully functional IDP, you would need to integrate ArgoCD or Flux for CI/CD, Prometheus or OpenTelemetry for monitoring, and Crossplane to define CRDs and manage infrastructure as code. Even with plugins like the ArgoCD plugin, it only provides insights into deployments; it does not manage workflows independently.
Beyond tooling, a custom-built IDP using Backstage would require extensive API integrations and automation to bridge gaps between different systems. Without these additions, Backstage remains a developer portal, not an IDP. Organizations that choose to build an IDP on top of Backstage must account for the time, resources, and maintenance required to manage integrations, ensure security compliance, and continuously improve the platform. In short, purpose-built IDPs offer these capabilities out of the box, reducing complexity and operational overhead.
Now, an IDP simplifies infrastructure management by automating provisioning, enforcing security policies, and integrating with DevOps workflows. Unlike a CI/CD pipeline that focuses only on code deployment, an IDP handles infrastructure setup, access control, and observability, making sure it is a simple development and operations process.
Manages infrastructure through code-based templates, eliminating manual setup and ensuring consistency.
Automates application builds, testing, and deployments, reducing manual work and errors.
Controls who can modify infrastructure and deploy applications, enforcing strict access policies.
By integrating automation, security, and monitoring into one centralized platform, IDPs help teams deploy their applications much faster while ensuring security and compliance at the same time.
Managing your cloud infrastructure isn’t as simple as spinning up an EC2 instance or deploying an application. As organizations scale, their infrastructure and environment management become more complex - multiple cloud providers, containerized applications, strict security policies, and interconnected services. Developers need fast access to resources, but setting up environments manually slows them down and increases the chances of misconfigurations.
Internal Developer Platforms solve these challenges by automating infrastructure tasks and enforcing standardized workflows across the development ecosystem. Here’s why more organizations are adopting IDPs:
Provisioning infrastructure manually can take hours or even days, depending on approval workflows and configuration steps. IDPs speed up the process by giving developers access to pre-approved infrastructure setups.
Manually handling infrastructure requests puts a heavy load on DevOps teams, increasing operational costs. IDPs automate infrastructure provisioning, allowing developers to self-serve resources without relying on any manual intervention.
Organizations that integrate IDPs see measurable improvements in efficiency, security and compliance standards, and cost savings.
By automating infrastructure management, enforcing security policies, and simplifying software delivery, IDPs help organizations scale faster while reducing operational overhead.
There are several internal developer platform examples in the industry, each designed to simplify your infrastructure management and application deployment. Not all Internal Developer Platforms work the same way. While they share the same goal - automating infrastructure provisioning, enforcing security policies, and simplifying deployments, their approaches vary. Some IDPs focus on stack-based deployments, where platform teams define reusable infrastructure components, while others offer UI-driven infrastructure automation, providing a visual interface for developers to configure resources without writing Terraform. Other platforms take an API-first approach, integrating directly into existing DevOps workflows.
One approach to IDPs is stack-based deployments, where infrastructure configurations are standardized and reused across multiple teams. Cycloid follows this model by allowing platform teams to define stacks for cloud services such as AWS EC2, RDS, and S3. Developers can then deploy these pre-configured stacks without worrying about networking, security groups, or storage configurations.
To provide a visual representation of how Cycloid enables stack-based infrastructure management, the diagram below shows how predefined infrastructure stacks, reusable templates, and automated deployment workflows streamline infrastructure provisioning while ensuring governance, cost estimation, and policy enforcement.
This works by using Infrastructure as Code, service catalogs, and orchestration layers:
Another approach is UI-driven infrastructure automation, which simplifies the provisioning process by allowing developers to select infrastructure components through an interactive interface. Instead of writing Terraform scripts or navigating complex Kubernetes configurations, developers can deploy resources with a few clicks.
This model integrates with API-based automation, self-service interfaces, and cloud provisioning tools:
The diagram below shows how UI-driven infrastructure automation enables self-service provisioning, graphical deployment workflows, and governance enforcement through a structured interface.
Now, if you were to build an IDP from scratch using Backstage, several challenges would arise. While Backstage provides a framework for building an internal developer platform, it does not include infrastructure automation, security enforcement, or CI/CD management out-of-the-box. This means DevOps teams would need to integrate multiple tools and use custom plugins to make it a full-fledged IDP.
Some of the limitations include:
Cycloid easily eliminates these challenges by offering an all-in-one platform that includes stack-based infrastructure automation, security policies, observability, and cost tracking out-of-the-box. Instead of stitching together different tools, Cycloid provides a simple interface for deploying and managing your cloud infrastructure.
Instead of writing Terraform from scratch or configuring cloud resources manually, developers can use pre-configured stacks to provision environments, define resources, estimate costs, and deploy applications, all through an automated workflow.
The first step in this process is creating a stack. A stack in Cycloid defines the infrastructure resource that will be deployed, such as an AWS EC2 instance, an RDS database, or a Kubernetes cluster.
This ensures consistency across deployments for development and operations teams and eliminates the need for developers to manage infrastructure configurations manually. By selecting a predefined stack, teams can enforce security policies, optimize resource allocation, and reduce the risk of misconfigurations.
Once the stack is created, the next step is to set up a project. In the upcoming update to Cycloid, a project will serve as the top-level structure where teams can organize deployments more flexibly. Instead of a direct project-to-stack mapping, Cycloid is introducing a component layer, allowing teams to create a project, then define environments such as production or staging, and finally, components within those environments.
Each component will utilize a stack, making it possible to compose an application project in an environment using multiple stacks. This enhancement provides greater modularity, enabling teams to manage infrastructure and applications more efficiently while maintaining clear separation between environments and services.
The diagram below shows how Cycloid structures deployments with its new component layer. It highlights how projects, environments, and components are organized, with each component leveraging a stack to automate infrastructure provisioning and deployment. This model ensures flexibility by allowing applications to be composed across multiple stacks while maintaining a GitOps-based approach for consistency and governance.
Now, developers assign security teams together, configure access permissions, and define environment configurations within the project. Instead of handling networking, IAM roles, or security groups separately, the project inherits these configurations from the stack, making sure that every deployment follows the same standards.
With the project in place, developers can move on to setting up an environment. In the upcoming update to Cycloid, an environment (such as production or staging) will act as a structured layer within a project, where applications and infrastructure components are organized.
Instead of binding an environment directly to a single stack, Cycloid's new component layer will allow teams to define multiple components within an environment, each utilizing different stacks. This enhancement enables greater flexibility in managing infrastructure, making it possible to compose an application using several stacks within the same environment.
When creating an environment, teams typically define its cloud provider and infrastructure setup based on the project's requirements. With Cycloid’s upcoming component layer, environments can include multiple components, each leveraging different stacks to support various services within the same environment. This allows teams to flexibly compose applications across multiple cloud providers or infrastructure setups as needed.
This flexibility makes sure that existing cloud resources can be reused while maintaining the option to define custom configurations when required.
Cycloid automates Terraform execution, provisioning the required infrastructure without requiring developers to apply configurations manually. Cycloid handles everything from instance creation to networking and IAM role assignment, making deployments faster and error-free.
Once the infrastructure is provisioned, the CI/CD pipeline takes over. Cycloid follows a GitOps-based approach, where all desired configurations are version-controlled in a Git repository, which serves as the source of truth for infrastructure and application deployments.
Cycloid integrates automated pipelines that fetch Terraform configurations, validate infrastructure changes, and ensure deployments remain consistent with the declared state in Git. This ensures that every modification is auditable, reproducible, and aligned with the defined infrastructure state.
To ensure clear visibility into deployments, Cycloid provides an Observability Dashboard that gives teams a real-time view of active, paused, and failed pipeline runs. This helps developers track Terraform execution, identify issues in their deployment process, and troubleshoot errors without switching between cloud provider dashboards.
By structuring deployments through stacks, projects, environments, and components, Cycloid’s IDP ensures that infrastructure provisioning is consistent, automated, and easily accessible to developers. This approach eliminates the complexity of manual setups, reduces DevOps workload, and accelerates application delivery.
To explore Cycloid more as an IDP, refer to the documentation.
So far, we’ve seen how an IDP internal developer platform removes the complexity of delivering software and managing infrastructure. We explored different IDP models and how Cycloid’s stack-based approach allows developers to deploy applications without handling Terraform or cloud configurations manually. With an IDP in place, teams can ship code faster while keeping infrastructure secure and consistent.
A developer platform provides tools, automation, and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications, while a developer portal is a centralized interface where developers can access tools, documentation, APIs, and internal services.
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) automates infrastructure provisioning and abstracts complexity for developers, while a DevOps platform focuses on CI/CD, collaboration, and automating the software development lifecycle.
An IDP simplifies infrastructure management by automating resource provisioning, enforcing security policies, and providing self-service deployment capabilities for developers.
An IDP automates infrastructure and integrates CI/CD workflows, while a service catalog provides a collection of pre-approved services that developers can request and deploy.