CDeck
An internal developer platform gives engineers one governed front door to infrastructure, deployment, and service ownership instead of assembling cloud tools by hand. CDeck is Infer Origins' engineering control deck for cloud native delivery, an enterprise IDP that pairs a Backstage powered developer portal with automated CAPI and CAPZ infrastructure provisioning on Azure, so teams provision environments, discover services, deploy workloads, apply platform standards, and understand operational health in one place.
CDeck turns complex cloud and platform operations into a governed self-service experience for engineering teams, treating the platform itself as a product for internal developers rather than a collection of disconnected tools. Built around Backstage and Kubernetes native infrastructure automation, it gives developers a unified front door for discovering services, provisioning environments, following golden paths, managing deployments, and understanding ownership and operational readiness, while platform teams retain control through reusable templates, policies, scorecards, and approved infrastructure patterns.
The platform challenge
As cloud platforms grow, developers are expected to navigate infrastructure provisioning, Kubernetes, deployment pipelines, security controls, service ownership, observability, and operational requirements. The result is higher cognitive load, inconsistent delivery patterns, and platform teams becoming a bottleneck for routine engineering tasks.
The CDeck approach
CDeck provides a single engineering front door to approved platform capabilities. Backstage brings together the service catalog, golden paths, documentation, ownership, scorecards, and developer workflows, while CAPI/CAPZ automation provisions the underlying Azure infrastructure and Kubernetes clusters behind the scenes.
Self-service with guardrails
Developers consume approved infrastructure and delivery capabilities through reusable templates and workflows instead of assembling cloud resources by hand. Platform teams define the boundaries once, through infrastructure patterns, policies, templates, and controls, so teams can move independently without bypassing governance.
From portal to infrastructure
A single self-service request in CDeck can chain together infrastructure provisioning, environment creation, repository and service setup, deployment workflows, ownership metadata, and operational controls, turning developer intent into a running workload through one repeatable path, rather than a series of manual handoffs.
How adoption starts
Adoption begins with a small number of high-frequency engineering journeys such as creating a service, provisioning an environment, deploying an application, or onboarding an existing workload. These journeys become paved-road workflows in CDeck and expand iteratively as teams adopt the platform.
Who it is for
Platform engineering teams building an internal developer platform and providing engineering teams with self-service infrastructure, deployment workflows, and operational guardrails.
When not to use it
When a small engineering organization can work effectively with direct infrastructure access and existing CI/CD tooling without an additional developer platform layer.