What is an internal developer platform?
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is a curated collection of tools, services, and infrastructure that enables development teams to efficiently build, deploy, and manage software applications. It provides standardised, self-service capabilities that abstract away infrastructure complexity while maintaining flexibility for developers.
Core purpose
IDPs address a fundamental challenge in modern software development: the growing complexity of infrastructure and operational requirements. As organisations scale, development teams often spend significant time managing infrastructure rather than delivering business value. An IDP solves this by providing:
- Self-service infrastructure: developers can provision resources without waiting for operations teams.
- Standardised workflows: consistent processes for building, testing, and deploying applications.
- Abstraction of complexity: hiding infrastructure details while maintaining necessary control.
- Golden paths: opinionated, best-practice workflows that guide developers toward success.
Key components
A well-designed Internal Developer Platform typically includes:
| Component | Purpose | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Application Configuration Management | Define and manage application settings across environments | Helm, Kustomize |
| Infrastructure Orchestration | Provision and manage underlying compute, network, and storage | Kubernetes, Terraform |
| Environment Management | Manage development, staging, and production environments | GitOps tools, namespace isolation |
| Deployment Management | Automate application releases and rollbacks | Flux CD, ArgoCD |
| Observability | Monitor application health, logs, and metrics | Prometheus, Grafana |
| Security & Compliance | Enforce policies and manage secrets | OPA, Vault |
Benefits for organisations
Improved developer experience
Developers focus on writing application code rather than wrestling with infrastructure. Self-service capabilities reduce dependencies on operations teams, accelerating development cycles.
Increased efficiency
Standardised workflows reduce duplication of effort. Teams leverage shared components and best practices rather than reinventing solutions.
Enhanced reliability
Consistent deployment processes reduce human error. Built-in observability and security controls improve overall system reliability.
Scalability
Platform teams can support many more development teams by providing self-service capabilities rather than handling individual requests.
IDP vs traditional approaches
Traditional infrastructure management often involves:
- Inconsistent tooling across teams
- Bottlenecks waiting for operations support
- Duplicated effort solving common problems
An IDP transforms this by:
- Providing consistent tooling and workflows
- Enabling self-service capabilities
- Centralizing solutions to common challenges
How EIDP implements IDP principles
EIDP embodies these IDP principles by providing:
- Managed platform services: we handle the platform complexity so you can focus on your applications
- European sovereignty: all infrastructure runs in EU data centers with European ownership
- Golden paths: standardised CI/CD pipelines and deployment patterns
- Self-service capabilities: provision environments and resources through automated workflows
- Built-in operational excellence: monitoring, security, and compliance features included by default
See our platform overview for detailed information about EIDP's specific implementation of these IDP concepts.