ForgeMark
ForgeMark is a comprehensive marketing automation platform designed for managing multiple brands from a single dashboard. It features AI-powered content generation, template-driven architecture, unified analytics, and automated outreach campaigns. Key capabilities: - Multi-brand management (Buildly, The Foundry, Open Build, Radical Therapy) - AI content generation via Ollama integration - Email marketing automation - Social media publishing - Influencer discovery and outreach - Campaign analytics and reporting - Google Ads integration
Case Study
Overview
ForgeMark: Multi-Brand Marketing Automation Platform
ForgeMark is a comprehensive marketing automation platform designed for managing multiple brands from a single dashboard. It features AI-powered content generation, template-driven architecture, unified analytics, and automated outreach campaigns.
Core Capabilities
- Service Catalog: Discover and manage all services across your organization
- Software Templates: Standardized project scaffolding with best practices baked in
- Tech Docs: Centralized documentation that lives with your code
- Plugin Ecosystem: Extensible architecture for custom integrations
- API Registry: Track and manage all APIs across teams
Designed for Scale
Built to support organizations from 10 to 10,000+ engineers, Backstage scales horizontally and integrates with your existing CI/CD pipelines, observability stack, and cloud providers.
The Problem
As organizations grow, their software ecosystems become increasingly complex:
- Service Discovery: Engineers can't find the services they need
- Documentation Drift: Docs become stale and scattered across wikis
- Onboarding Friction: New developers take months to become productive
- Inconsistent Standards: Each team uses different tools and patterns
- Knowledge Silos: Critical information locked in individual teams
Without a centralized developer portal, organizations face decreased velocity, increased maintenance costs, and a growing technical debt burden.
The Solution
Backstage creates a single point of entry for your entire software organization:
-
Unified Service Catalog: Every microservice, library, and data pipeline cataloged with ownership, dependencies, and health status.
-
Software Templates: Scaffold new projects that automatically include CI/CD, monitoring, documentation, and security scanning.
-
TechDocs Integration: Documentation generated from markdown in your repos, always up-to-date and searchable.
-
Plugin Architecture: 100+ community plugins for Kubernetes, AWS, PagerDuty, SonarQube, and more.
-
Buildly Ecosystem: Native integration with all Buildly services for seamless developer experience.
Real-World Implementation
Case Study: FinTech Scale-Up Accelerates Developer Productivity
The Challenge
A fast-growing FinTech company with 150 engineers across 8 teams was experiencing:
- 45 days average onboarding time for new engineers
- 300+ microservices with no centralized documentation
- 60% of engineer time spent searching for information
- Inconsistent security practices across teams
- No visibility into service dependencies
The Solution
The company deployed Backstage integrated with Buildly Core:
Phase 1: Service Catalog (Weeks 1-4)
- Automated discovery of all services from GitHub and Kubernetes
- Defined ownership metadata and service health checks
- Created dependency mapping across all 300+ services
Phase 2: Software Templates (Weeks 5-8)
- Built template library for microservices, frontend apps, and data pipelines
- Integrated security scanning and compliance checks into templates
- Automated CI/CD pipeline creation via Logic Service
Phase 3: TechDocs & Search (Weeks 9-12)
- Migrated documentation from Confluence to TechDocs
- Implemented AI-powered search across all docs and services
- Created architectural decision records (ADR) system
The Results
After 12 weeks of implementation:
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onboarding Time | 45 days | 12 days | 73% faster |
| Time Finding Info | 60% | 15% | 75% reduction |
| Security Compliance | 40% | 98% | +58 points |
| Documentation Coverage | 25% | 95% | +70 points |
"Backstage has become the homepage for our engineering org. Every new hire starts there, and every service lives there." — CTO, FinTech Scale-Up
Key Success Factors
- Executive mandate for all teams to register services
- Template-first approach made adoption the path of least resistance
- Community plugins accelerated integration with existing tools
- Buildly Logic Service automated workflows around the service lifecycle
Key Benefits
Use Cases
Give new engineers a single place to discover services, read documentation, and understand the architecture.
technologyTrack ownership, dependencies, and health across hundreds of services with automated compliance checking.
enterpriseProvide golden paths for developers with software templates that bake in best practices.
technologyCentralized API registry with documentation, versioning, and deprecation workflows.
financial-servicesTarget Industries
Company Sizes
Buildly Ecosystem Integrations
SSO, team management, and permission synchronization
Automated workflows for service lifecycle events
Developer productivity and service health dashboards
Track platform adoption and team engagement metrics
AI-Powered Workflows
AI-powered search across all documentation and service metadata
Auto-generate API documentation from code and comments
AI-driven impact analysis for service changes
Business Workflows
End-to-end automation from template to deployed service
Automated PRB integration for production changes
Connect services to on-call schedules and runbooks
Technology Stack
Support Options
- GitHub Issues
- Discord community
- Public docs
- Email support
- 24-hour SLA
- Private Slack channel
- 24/7 support
- 1-hour SLA
- Dedicated engineer
- Custom plugin development
Hosting Options
Full control deployment on any Kubernetes cluster
Included in licenseManaged Backstage with automatic updates and scaling
Starting at $500/monthManaged Services
Full deployment and initial catalog population
Starting at $25,000Build integrations for your specific tools
Starting at $15,000Migrate from existing wiki/docs systems to TechDocs
Starting at $10,000Getting Started
Getting Started with Backstage
Prerequisites
- Node.js 18+
- PostgreSQL 12+
- Docker (for local development)
Quick Start
# Create a new Backstage app
npx @backstage/create-app@latest my-backstage
cd my-backstage
# Start the development server
yarn dev
Connecting to Buildly Core
Configure SSO with Buildly Core in app-config.yaml:
auth:
providers:
buildly:
development:
clientId: ${BUILDLY_CLIENT_ID}
clientSecret: ${BUILDLY_CLIENT_SECRET}
metadataUrl: https://your-buildly-core.com/.well-known/openid-configuration
Adding Your First Service
Create a catalog-info.yaml in your service repo:
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
name: my-service
description: My awesome microservice
annotations:
github.com/project-slug: myorg/my-service
spec:
type: service
lifecycle: production
owner: team-platform
For more: https://docs.buildly.io/backstage
Repository
🆓 Free Access Available
Purchase includes license + support
⚖️ Licensing & Support
Fair Hybrid License Model
🛠️ What's Included with Your Purchase
🌟 Open Source Community
What's Included:
- Complete source code access
- Commercial hosting license
- 30-day LabsChat support
- SLA: <1 day response
- Deployment configuration files
- Installation documentation
- Multiple deployment guides (Docker, K8s, GitHub Pages, Buildly Core)
- Community support access
Free for personal use • Commercial hosting requires license • Converts to Apache 2.0 after 24 months