Appvia Ltd

Backstage Internal Developer Platform (IDP)

Custom implementation of Backstage based on the individual requirements of the organisation. Specialising in providing developer self-service with enhanced visibility, management and collaboration to improve developer velocity, without sacrificing security. This service also creates consistency which minimises the operational overhead of Day-2 lifecycle management.

Features

• Plugins: Extend Backstage with custom functionality.
• Templates: Provision new services quickly with pre-built code.
• TechDocs: Keep your documentation always accessible.
• Service directory: Discover internal tools and services.
• Unified dashboard: Get a central view of everything you need.
• Software catalogue: Find all your company's software in one place.
• Kubernetes integration: Manage containerized services effectively.
• Cloud agnostic: Works across different cloud providers.
• Self-hostable: Deploy Backstage on your own infrastructure.

Benefits

• Implement Backstage with experienced engineers and quickly achieve MVP.
• Implement Backstage with experienced engineers and quickly achieve MVP.
• Enhanced self-service developer experience improving developer velocity.
• Rapid provisioning of infrastructure and resources resulting in quicker onboarding.
• Cost visibility resulting in more ownership of budgets by teams.
• Extremely customisable, create functionality that improves the developer experience.
• Extensibility, rich plugins community that is opensource and vendor managed.
• Improved visibility of other teams' work reduces duplication of effort.
• Vendor flexibility: Work across different cloud providers, improving resilience.

£450 to £1,600 a unit a day

• Education pricing available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at info@appvia.io. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

801849596337843

Contact

Appvia
0203 488 4234
info@appvia.io

Planning

• Planning service: Yes
• How the planning service works: Requirements Gathering: Understand your vision for Backstage and its role within your organisation. This is usually done by having discovery workshops and strategy meetings.; Design Workshops: Create a custom structure and configuration, potentially including custom or open source plugins for specific needs. ; Phased Rollout: Create a roadmap that prioritises developer experience and feature delivery whilst minimising disruption.; Cloud Architecture Review: Guidance on infrastructure requirements (compute, storage, networking) and support planning the implementation using best practices (version control, CI/CD pipelines).; ; Project Management: Oversee and coordinate all aspects of the project, ensuring it stays on track and meets the outlined objectives. This involves planning timelines, resources, and tasks, as well as facilitating communication between team members and stakeholders. Additionally, Appvia will ensure that the project aligns with the buyers vision and requirements, making adjustments as needed to ensure its success.; Measuring Success: Define metrics to track Backstage's impact, focusing on developer adoption, onboarding ease, and internal tool discoverability.
• Planning service works with specific services: No

Training

• Training service provided: Yes
• How the training service works: Appvia provides training on this service via ‘on the job’ paired engineering and through formal workshops. ; Paired Engineering: The Appvia implementation of Backstage is designed to set your organisation up for continued success utilising the platform. This means we prioritise knowledge sharing throughout the delivery and enable engineers to maintain everything post offboarding. ; Formal Workshops: ; Backstage Fundamentals (for Developers): This platform will provide developers a portal to self-serve infrastructure and resources to deploy their applications or services. It is crucial for a great developer experience to train them on the basics.; Backstage Fundamentals (for Platform Engineers): Gain in-depth knowledge of Backstage's core functionalities, enabling you to manage and optimise the platform effectively.; How to create custom plugins (for Platform Engineers): Given the extensibility of Backstage through ‘plugins’, Appvia provides specific training enabling engineering teams to develop their own specific plugins.
• Training is tied to specific services: No

Setup and migration

• Setup or migration service available: Yes
• How the setup or migration service works: Backstage solves one of the key challenges when migrating to the cloud - consistency. Through this service you create all the patterns, templates and documentation that makes it easy for your developers to follow best-practice in the cloud. ; ; Appvia’s Backstage implementation also provides the automation required for the self-service of cloud infrastructure and resources so projects can be rapidly onboarded, without dependencies on large operations teams. It also surfaces costs, enabling developers and engineers to make informed decisions when working, meaning spiralling spend shouldn’t become an obstacle to further cloud adoption.; ; Additionally, Backstage is highly extensible and there is a rich community of opensource and vendor maintained plugins. This means you can easily utilise the tools and technologies you are familiar with on-premise in your new cloud environments. ; ; Finally, when Appvia completes the setup of Backstage it can act as a great inventory of all your services and applications across your business, giving people visibility of what is running and where - this can speed up migrations by helping you quickly prioritise what to move and when.
• Setup or migration service is for specific cloud services: No

Quality assurance and performance testing

• Quality assurance and performance testing service: Yes
• How the quality assurance and performance testing works: Ensuring Quality Assurance and Performance Testing:; ; When it comes to making sure your Backstage platform is performant and reliable, Appvia takes a thorough approach to quality assurance and performance testing.; ; For custom plugins and features, Appvia provides custom tests, using precise methods to check each component's functionality (Unit Tests). Plus, Appvia makes sure everything integrates seamlessly with Backstage's core (Integration Testing).; ; On the security front, Appvia optimises your setup and ensures it aligns with common security standards (CIS benchmarks, etc). In addition, Appvia utilises build time scans and run time protection enforce best-practice ensuring vulnerabilities are detected.; ; With automated alerts, Appvia’s implementation will notify you if anything needs remediating, so you can fix it fast. Plus, our real-time dashboards keep you in the loop on how everything's running, so you can stay ahead of the game.

Security testing

• Security services: Yes
• Security services type:
  • Security strategy
  • Security risk management
  • Security design
  • Cyber security consultancy
  • Security incident management
  • Security audit services

Ongoing support

• Ongoing support service: Yes
• Types of service supported:
  • Buyer hosting or software
  • Hosting or software provided by your organisation
  • Hosting or software provided by a third-party organisation
• How the support service works: Dedicated Team: Our team of Backstage experts is available to answer your questions and troubleshoot any issues that arise during implementation and beyond.; ; Multi-Channel Support: Reach us through various channels – live chat, email ticketing system, or knowledge base articles – for convenient and timely assistance.; ; Community Resources: Appvia connects you with the wider Backstage community, providing access to valuable resources, best practices, and ongoing learning opportunities.; ; Customization Guidance: Need help tailoring Backstage with custom plugins or integrations? Our team can provide expert guidance and support.; ; Cloud Infrastructure: Appvia also offers to support the cloud infrastructure required to run backstage.; ; Ongoing Maintenance: Appvia offers ongoing support to ensure Backstage runs smoothly, addressing any issues that may arise

Service scope

• Service constraints: N/A - requirements will be defined as part of the service

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: We have strict SLAs for response times depending on the priority of the issue, varying from a production P1 incident up to a P4 general query. Our SLAs define response times as within 1 hour for the highest priority issues, for which we have on-call teams available 24/7 who are immediately notified in the event of an issue being raised.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support accessibility standard: WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
• Web chat accessibility testing: N/A - This testing is completed by the product vendors we use.
• Support levels: Definitions:; Response: The time interval from when a customer raises a new issue, to when an Appvia support agent acknowledges the request and starts work on it.; Normal Business Hours: 9am - 5pm local UK time, Monday to Friday excluding UK Bank Holidays.; Enhanced Support Hours: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including UK Bank Holidays.; ; Standard Support Package:; P1, 4 hours response, Normal Business Hours; P2, 1 day response, Normal Business Hours; P3, 2 days response, Normal Business Hours; P4, 5 days response, Normal Business Hours; ; Enterprise Support Package:; P1, 1 hour response, Enhanced Support Hours; P2, 4 hours response, Enhanced Support Hours; P3, 1 day response, Normal Business Hours; P4, 2 days response, Normal Business Hours; ; A Technical Account Manager is provided as part of undertaking an on-going support contract.

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: British Assessment Bureau
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 17/10/2023
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: N/A
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist
  • AWS Certified Security - Specialty
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
  • Microsoft Certified: Cybersecurity Architect Expert

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  Appvia's core purpose is to aid organisations in migrating to the Cloud, a more environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to data centres by up to 93%. Appvia holds itself accountable to active action by its commitment to become Net Zero by 2050 and its Certified B Corp status. Businesses that hold this certification have been externally validated as operating at the highest levels of ethical, social and sustainability standards. It communicates Appvia’s dedication to creating positive impact as a business.; ; To achieve Net Zero and help fight climate change, Appvia has adopted the following carbon reduction targets. Short-term projections show that carbon emissions will decrease to 38.8 tCO2e by 2028. This is a reduction of 18.5%. Emissions will be reviewed annually against the 2023 baseline and published on the company website.; ; Appvia reports no emissions for Scope 1 or 2. The mentioned emissions are from Scope 3 which are emissions that the company itself does not produce, but by those that it’s indirectly responsible for in the value chain. Therefore to reduce Scope 3 emissions, Appvia will:; prioritise partnerships with suppliers that have a sustainability focus to become Net Zero by 2050 or earlier. The target for the end of 2024 is that 20% of suppliers will have this priority; reduce business travel emissions by 3.3% each year by encouraging business travel on public transport and using the company’s Cycle to Work Scheme; implement an electric car salary sacrifice scheme with a B Corp company. The scheme will be rolled out to eligible employees with email communication about the new benefit and a webinar to learn about the advantages and ask questions. The target is 15% uptake by the end of 2024; ; These targets will be monitored and reported on annually by People Operations.

  Covid-19 recovery

  To support the physical and mental well-being of its employees Appvia offers private healthcare as a benefit. Private healthcare is advantageous to health and care services by reducing the demand put on it. To aid the Covid-19 recovery, Appvia will make private healthcare a day-one benefit by the end of Q2 of 2024, replacing the current initial 3 months of postponement. Another target is to increase the number of employees signed up to the private healthcare scheme from 55% to 90% by the end of Q3 of 2024. This will be done by advertising the wide array of benefits the scheme offers, like mental health support and discounted gym memberships, through various channels such as the company Slack and email. People Operations will be responsible for communication and monitoring of uptake.; ; Appvia will continue its partnership with the University of Wales where it offers students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience learning with professional DevOps. The engineers teach subject matter such as Cloud computing and explain the technical challenges they face and how they overcome them. The target is annual workshops with 3 of Appvia’s DevOps, organised and monitored by the People Operations team.; ; Whilst new ways of working were introduced at Appvia during the height of Covid-19 like hybrid working and social distancing, further initiatives continue to be implemented. The isolation caused great stress and some people have struggled to return to life post-Covid. Appvia will host regular social events that encourage collaboration and teamwork varying from remote team quiz events to board game evenings. This mix of events provides inclusivity to those who are vulnerable and shielding at home. A target for 2024 is to increase attendance from an average of 63% to 80%. Attendance and feedback mechanisms will be monitored by People Operations to guarantee engagement.

  Tackling economic inequality

  By the end of Q3 2024, Appvia will have launched its Academy programme and enrolled five candidates. This programme will focus on hiring people who have completed training through the AWS re/Start scheme and upskilling them internally. This aims to tackle economic inequality as individuals can access the AWS re/Start scheme for free providing them with core AWS training alongside other areas such as security and networking. The scheme does not require any prior experience or qualifications, except a high school diploma of GED equivalent, which creates accessibility for careers in the cloud that may have been unavailable without it. Creating an Academy at Appvia means that talented and dedicated individuals are given job opportunities, with training provided in-house, without barriers such as university fees preventing them from doing so.; ; Alongside the Academy, Appvia will create between 20 to 60 new job opportunities in 2024 to support economic growth. Talent Acquisition will monitor and report on this target quarterly to SLT. Appvia is an inclusive employer so these roles will be accessible to everyone regardless of their background. ; ; Appvia currently participates in several measures to uphold its part as an ethical business. In 2024 these standards will be expanded throughout its supplier chain. This means asking suppliers to follow the Prompt Payment Code, a code of practice for businesses to encourage supplier payment in 30 to 60 days. This allows businesses to budget effectively and can be especially helpful for start-ups and small businesses. To help mitigate unnecessary cyber security risks, suppliers will be required to obtain Cyber Essentials certification. Appvia will also ask suppliers to join in its support of the Better Act, a coalition to change the law meaning businesses will have to consider the social and environmental impact of decisions, rather than just profits.

  Equal opportunity

  To tackle workforce inequality Appvia will promote social integration with a series of key activities. ; ; As a signatory of Tech Talent Charter, Appvia agrees to annually provide anonymised diversity data enabling companies to understand diversity in the tech space. Having market statistics means that Appvia can benchmark itself accordingly and see where improvements can be made. ; ; The engineering field is underrepresented by women, so Appvia will increase its involvement with the charity Codebar to help address this issue. Codebar empowers minorities in the tech space by organising free workshops for them to attend where they can strengthen their skills like coding. Appvia will host 3 of these workshops annually, as well as provide coaches. These workshops provide a space to help disadvantaged groups, including women, feel more confident in their abilities amongst their peers, reducing barriers to progression. ; ; To improve diversification in the workplace, Appvia will be attending job fairs hosted by Codebar and other relevant organisers to advertise and discuss job opportunities with a diverse talent pool. The People Operations team will be responsible for monitoring diversity data within Appvia and ensuring market standards are met or exceeded. Monthly reporting will guarantee that progress is being made. Any issues will be highlighted, allowing for corrective action to be taken such as reviewing hiring practices.; ; To help reduce the disability employment gap, Appvia will implement the following measures to make applying for a role a more accessible process. The measures to be completed Q2 of 2024 will include:; Updating the website by; introducing a vivid and calm version, changed by a toggle, so that people with ADHD don’t feel overwhelmed; allowing manual font size adjustment for the visually impaired; Introducing remote-only contracts for people unable to travel to the office due to their disability

  Wellbeing

  While Appvia has several measures in place to ensure the optimal health and wellbeing of its employees, such as private healthcare, a cycle-to-work scheme and free therapy, continual improvement is always required.; ; By the end of Q3 of 2024, Appvia will increase the number of trained mental health first aiders in the company from 10% to 20%. Training will be organised by People Operations. Having more trained mental health first aiders means more resources available for employees to share any difficulties they may experience and be offered support.; ; By the end of Q4 of 2024, Appvia will have rolled out a new Wellness Programme which will provide opportunities for employees to prioritise their physical and mental health. The Programme will introduce 5 mental health days so employees can take time off work to focus on their mental health. Daily exercise breaks will be booked into people’s calendars to remind them to move their bodies. Employees will be encouraged to have an optimised work-life balance by not checking work messages outside of working hours. The Programme will be implemented and rolled out by People Operations.; ; Appvia hosts quarterly Meetups for Cloud Platform Engineering London to strengthen the engineering community in London. These events help to educate people who want to learn about cloud, infrastructure and Kubernetes. They are free to attend to facilitate knowledge-sharing amongst peers and create easy access to information in the tech space. The Meetups improve community integration through the collaboration of external speakers from competing companies who come together to discuss shared interests. They also provide networking opportunities and foster a sense of belonging. Appvia will continue to host these events every 3 months, organised by the Talent Acquisition team, for the foreseeable future.

Pricing

• Price: £450 to £1,600 a unit a day
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at info@appvia.io. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.