What is an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)?

As the complexity of modern software development and cloud computing technologies increases, organizations aim to streamline their workflows and enable their developers to be as productive as possible. The need to balance agility in software development and infrastructure management at scale has given rise to platform engineering and the internal developer platform (IDP) concept.

This post will explore an IDP, its key components, its benefits, and why it might be the next big thing in your development ecosystem.

What is an internal developer platform?

An internal developer platform (IDP) is a self-service layer that sits on top of an organization’s infrastructure and development tools and abstracts many of these components’ underlying complexity. An ID comprises integrated tools and services designed to enable development teams to build, deploy, and manage applications more efficiently.

Essentially, an IDP provides a unified interface for developers to interact with the entire software lifecycle, from code to production, while automating many routine tasks, enforcing best practices, and ensuring a consistent experience across an organization and its different environments.