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Tooling
- 1: Docker
- 2: Backstage
- 3: Bruno
- 4: Microcks
- 5: Crossplane
1 - Docker
Individual unit of compute for delivering applications and integrations.
Docker provides a platform for developing, shipping, and running applications by packaging them into standardized units called containers. Containers are lightweight, standalone, executable packages that include everything needed to run an application—code, runtime, system tools, libraries, and settings. Docker enables developers to separate applications from infrastructure, allowing them to deliver software quickly and consistently. The platform uses a client-server architecture where the Docker client communicates with the Docker daemon, which handles the heavy lifting of building, running, and distributing containers. Containers are isolated from each other and the host system, yet they share the operating system kernel, making them much more efficient than traditional virtual machines. This means multiple containers can run simultaneously on a server, with containerized software running the same way regardless of the infrastructure—whether it’s on a local development machine, in a data center, or in the cloud.
Docker streamlines the entire development lifecycle by providing tools and workflows for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Developers can write code locally using containers that provide standardized environments, share their work with colleagues, push applications to test environments, and deploy to production with confidence that the application will work the same everywhere. Docker automates repetitive tasks like environment setup, dependency management, and image building, allowing developers to focus on writing code rather than troubleshooting configuration issues. The platform includes Docker Hub, a public registry containing thousands of pre-built container images that developers can use as starting points for their applications, and Docker Compose for defining and running multi-container applications. By improving resource utilization and enabling teams to ship code faster—Docker users ship software seven times more frequently than non-Docker users—Docker helps organizations reduce costs, accelerate development cycles, and build modern applications using microservices architectures.
License: Apache 2.0
Tags: Containers, Compute
Properties: Kubernetes-native control plane (CRDs, controllers), multi-cloud and SaaS provisioning via Providers, Managed Resources, Composite Resource Definitions (XRDs), Compositions, Claims (XRCs), Composition Functions, declarative GitOps workflows, fine-grained RBAC and namespace isolation, drift detection and continuous reconciliation, secret propagation to workloads, health/status via Conditions, policy and validation via OpenAPI schemas, package manager (OCI) for providers and compositions, versioning and upgrades with rollback, observability (events, metrics, logs), pluggable provider ecosystem (including Terrajet), cross-resource references and dependency ordering, cross-namespace publishing and claim binding, works with Helm/Kustomize/Argo CD/Flux
Website: https://www.docker.com/
2 - Backstage
Delivering internal developer portals.
Backstage is an open-source platform (created at Spotify and now a CNCF project) for building internal developer portals that centralize a company’s software ecosystem—services, data pipelines, websites, libraries, infrastructure, and more—into a single, searchable catalog. It provides opinionated building blocks like the Software Catalog, Software Templates (scaffolder) for “golden paths,” TechDocs for docs-as-code, and a rich plugin system so teams can surface CI/CD status, deployments, cost, ownership, and runbooks in one place. The goal is to tame sprawl, standardize workflows, and give developers a self-service hub that speeds delivery while improving reliability and governance.
License: Apache 2.0
Tags: Portals, Catalogs
Properties: Domains, Systems, Components, APIs, Resources, Groups, Locations, Templates
Website: https://backstage.io/
3 - Bruno
Open-source, GitOps, Local API Client
Bruno is an open-source, Git-friendly API client designed for developing, testing, and organizing API requests in a local, file-based environment. Unlike traditional tools like Postman or Insomnia that rely on cloud storage or proprietary formats, Bruno stores collections as plain-text files in a human-readable “.bru” format, making them easy to version, share, and collaborate on using Git. It supports REST, GraphQL, and other request types, along with features such as scripting, environment variables, and testing through lightweight JavaScript assertions. Built to be fast, offline-first, and privacy-respecting, Bruno provides a streamlined and developer-centric experience for managing APIs directly within existing source control workflows.
License: Apache 2.0
Tags: Client, Testing
Properties: Collections, Requests, Responses, Scripts, Tests, Automation
Website: https://www.usebruno.com/
4 - Microcks
Mocking and contract testing for APIs using common API artifacts.
Microcks is an open-source, cloud-/Kubernetes-native tool for API mocking and contract testing that turns your existing artifacts—OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, gRPC/Protobuf, GraphQL schemas, Postman collections, SoapUI projects—into live mocks and reusable tests, with CI/CD integrations (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Tekton). It supports both synchronous and event-driven APIs, connecting to brokers like Kafka, MQTT, AMQP/RabbitMQ, NATS, and WebSocket to validate payloads against your specs. Microcks is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation Sandbox project (accepted June 22, 2023).
License: Apache 2.0
Tags: Testing, Mocking
Properties: API mocking for REST/gRPC/GraphQL/SOAP, event-driven mocking & contract testing for Kafka/MQTT/AMQP-RabbitMQ/NATS/WebSocket (and other brokers), import from OpenAPI/AsyncAPI/Protobuf/GraphQL/Postman/SoapUI, schema-conformance testing with drift detection, smart dynamic mocks with on-the-fly transformations, GitHub Actions & CI/CD integration, Microcks REST API for automation, Kubernetes-native deployment via Helm and Operator, Avro + Schema Registry support on Kafka, organized repository & web UI for managing mocks and tests.
Website: https://microcks.io/
5 - Crossplane
Establish a control plane for infrastructure and APIs.
Crossplane is a CNCF project that turns Kubernetes into a universal control plane for infrastructure and platform APIs: cloud resources (databases, buckets, networks), SaaS, and even other clusters are modeled as Kubernetes custom resources and reconciled by providers for AWS, Azure, GCP, and more. Platform teams define higher-level, opinionated abstractions using XRDs and Compositions, publish them as installable packages, and expose safe “claims” so app teams can self-serve PostgreSQLs, queues, or whole app platforms via the same Kubernetes API they already use. This enables GitOps-friendly, declarative, multi-cloud provisioning with fine-grained RBAC, drift detection, and the ability to build bespoke internal platforms without writing bespoke controllers.
License: Apache 2.0
Tags: Control Plane, Infrastructure, Platform, APIs
Properties: Kubernetes-native control plane (CRDs, controllers), multi-cloud and SaaS provisioning via Providers, Managed Resources, Composite Resource Definitions (XRDs), Compositions, Claims (XRCs), Composition Functions, declarative GitOps workflows, fine-grained RBAC and namespace isolation, drift detection and continuous reconciliation, secret propagation to workloads, health/status via Conditions, policy and validation via OpenAPI schemas, package manager (OCI) for providers and compositions, versioning and upgrades with rollback, observability (events, metrics, logs), pluggable provider ecosystem (including Terrajet), cross-resource references and dependency ordering, cross-namespace publishing and claim binding, works with Helm/Kustomize/Argo CD/Flux
Website: https://www.crossplane.io/
Links
- Companies With Commercial Offerings - https://www.crossplane.io/commercial