Red Hat today updates its internal developer portal (IDP) offering to include an automated template lifecycle management capability and a preview of a model context protocol (MCP) server that has been embedded into the Lightspeed artificial intelligence (AI) framework originally developed by its parent company, IBM, that is now based on the open source Llama Stack framework.
Additionally, Red Hat Developer Hub 1.8 also adds previews of an OpenShift AI connector to integrate with application development and deployment framework based on Kubernetes that Red Hat provides and a scorecard plugin that displays metrics such as the number of open security vulnerabilities, outstanding high-priority bugs, or stale pull requests for any given component.
Red Hat has launched a certified plugins program through which extensions will now be validated and supported.
Based on the open source Backstage IDP originally developed by Spotify, the latest version of the Red Hat IDP, in addition to reducing friction, adds a range of AI capabilities that, for example, make it possible to use natural language to query and “chat” with the software catalog embedded in the IDP.
Additionally, the output of the open source software composition analysis (SCA) tool that Red Hat provides can now automatically be included in a prompt to enable an AI model to generate higher-quality code.
James Labocki, senior director for product management at Red Hat, said that latter capability is especially important for code migration initiatives because it provides the AI model with the context it needs to create more trusted output.
In general, Red Hat is trying to reduce the level of friction that many application development teams regularly encounter. For example, the automated template lifecycle management capability added to the IDP creates a persistent link between applications and their source templates, allowing platform engineering teams to automatically notify developers or create pull requests (PRs) when changes, such as making available security patches, are made. There is also now a personalized command center through which platform engineering teams can set up role-specific dashboards for developers.
It’s not clear to what degree organizations have adopted IDPs as part of an effort to improve the application developer experience by providing more self-service capabilities, but there is clearly no shortage of options. The challenge is that setting up and maintaining an IDP requires a significant amount of time and effort, an issue that Red Hat is trying to address by providing a curated instance of Backstage that is being extended to add multiple AI capabilities.
Each organization will need to determine to what degree to empower a platform engineering team to centralize the management of software engineering workflows via an IDP, but the one clear thing is that there is a need to streamline DevOps workflows among teams that often adopt a wide range of tools and platforms that ultimately hamper collaboration. The issue, as always, is convincing those teams to put their faith in a platform engineering team that might not necessarily give them as much latitude to adopt any tool or platform as they best see fit.