One aspect of the present disclosure relates to a backplane initiator for testing enclosure management controller. The backplane initiator includes: an initiator board and an initiator control application. The initiator board includes initiator controller, at least one SGPIO interface, at least one SMBus interface, and a first communication interface. The initiator controller is configured to transmit control commands and data according to enclosure management protocol through the SGPIO interface and the SMBus interface to an EMC. The initiator control application, when executed on a computing device having a second communication interface in communication with the first communication interface, is configured to establish a communication channel with the initiator controller through the first and second communication interfaces, and instruct the initiator controller to transmit a first control command and first control data according to enclosure management protocol through the SGPIO interface and the SMBus interface to the EMC.