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• Developers using Kubernetes often need to manage dependencies like databases and message queues
• Manually provisioning and managing these dependencies is not scalable
• Service catalog was an attempt to solve this problem by providing a single source of truth for all infrastructure and application dependencies
• Service catalog was built on top of the open service broker API, which allows for decoupling between service providers and consumers
• One issue with service catalog was its complexity and lack of adoption

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• Backstage was developed by Spotify to address the problem of scattered engineering tools and lack of information about services.
• It started as System C, an inventory of services, but was reworked to make it more extensible and accommodate other categories of entities like data pipelines and websites.
• Backstage has a plug-in framework that allows for more isolated feature development and a unified interface for all tooling, making it easier for engineers to venture into other domains.
• The use of Backstage has resulted in a significant reduction in onboarding time for new engineers at Spotify.