Frontside Software

Frontside helps software teams that build cloud native applications improve the way they develop, test and ship software. It is a consultancy that takes in the full route, from a developer's first local environment and tests to shipping and developer portals, and it sends cross-functional consultants into client organizations to find and remove bottlenecks.

Backstage for internal developer platforms

A large part of the work is adopting and extending Backstage, the open source developer portal, so it fits a client's own infrastructure, services and people. Frontside says the aim is to connect an organization's code, collaborators and cloud services and to make those relationships visible to everyone who needs them. The firm also points to cost control, arguing that bringing optimization closer to developers lets teams move faster without letting costs climb with them.

Testing moved into the development cycle

Frontside helps teams move automated tests into the development cycle, using open source technologies so that tests run quickly and reliably. The firm's view is that quality assurance is often a source of frustration in teams that want to deliver on time, and that testing earlier removes much of that friction. It describes its testing work as a route to on-time releases that work.

Inner Source culture and technical leadership

Many companies have capable developers but lack the leadership to spot where improvements should come from and to carry them out. Frontside draws on a network of enterprise partners and open source maintainers to recommend changes and to nurture an Inner Source culture, in which teams inside an organization share and reuse code the way open source projects do.

Technical writing on Backstage, GitHub Actions and Deno

The firm publishes technical articles that show how its engineers work. Recent pieces cover ways of integrating external services into Backstage, running parallel jobs in GitHub Actions and testing Backstage ingestion, and they reflect the practical focus of the consultancy's client work across developer experience and testing.