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- 12/15-factor app
- Principles for applications that a platform can operate automatically: the twelve factors from 12factor.net (such as configuration from the environment, stateless processes, logs to stdout) and the three additions API First, Telemetry and Authentication & Authorization. They are a prerequisite for SREaaS.
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- Accelerate package
- A fixed-price package with a clear scope and defined outcome from the Accelerate phase, booked once: Onboarding, Containerization, Deployment, Kubernetes Migration, Production Readiness and Security & Compliance Readiness. All except Onboarding are booked per workload.
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- Add-on
- An optional platform capability booked per platform or workload cluster, such as the web application firewall or a custom SLA – part of the managed platform. Further add-ons such as GitOps with Argo CD, service mesh and geo-redundancy are in development.
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- Advisory Accelerator
- A fixed allowance of architecture advisory with a dedicated architect and call-off period – for decisions on your own system, before you start and in any later phase. Available without a kloudease tier. Support around your use of kloudease is covered by Care instead.
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- Agentic workflows
- A managed application based on n8n: automated processes for applications and AI, operated by us. You bring your own n8n licence (BYOL) or get one through us on request.
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- BYOI
- Bring Your Own Infrastructure: instead of getting STACKIT through us, you use your own cloud account (e.g. with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or STACKIT) or your own infrastructure such as OpenStack, VMware or Proxmox. We take care of platform operations; you pay infrastructure costs directly to the provider, with no mark-up. From Business, billed via capacity packs.
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- BYOL
- Bring Your Own License: you bring an existing software licence, for example for n8n, and we operate the software on your platform.
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- Capacity pack
- The billing unit for BYOI. The pack size is based on the total vCPU capacity provisioned across all clusters, not on consumption.
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- Care
- Support around your use of kloudease and the services you have booked – such as Kubernetes upgrades, ingress and DNS changes, configuring add-ons or troubleshooting. As needed (Care On Demand) or as a monthly allowance of hours (Care Essential, Plus, Pro). The support hours of your tier apply.
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- Cloud-native
- Applications built to run in containers – deployable, scalable and observable in an automated way, for example following the 12-factor principles. kloudease brings you the industry standard for cloud-native applications: Kubernetes and everything on top of it that operations, security and data require.
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- Cloud provider
- A provider of infrastructure such as compute, storage and networking – for example STACKIT, AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. kloudease also supports private cloud environments such as OpenStack or VMware in your own data centre, and Proxmox.
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- Cluster hardening
- Baseline hardening and best practices for every Kubernetes cluster before the first application runs – included in every tier.
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- CNCF
- Cloud Native Computing Foundation – the open-source foundation behind Kubernetes and many platform components. kloudease's platform services come from the CNCF ecosystem; AOE is a Silver Member of the CNCF and a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP).
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- Container image
- The executable package of your application including its dependencies. Your CI pipeline builds versioned images and pushes them to your registry – "latest" as a tag is not enough for operations. No image yet? That is what the Containerization Accelerate package is for.
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- Control plane
- The control layer of a Kubernetes cluster that schedules workloads and enforces the desired state. With kloudease, every customer gets their own clusters – no shared control planes. AOE takes care of operating them and keeping them available.
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- Corporate GPT
- A managed application based on Open WebUI: a chat interface for AI models with full data sovereignty and sign-in via the platform's single sign-on. The model is your choice, e.g. sovereign via STACKIT.
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- Custom SLA
- An add-on in the Enterprise tier: contractually agreed SLA targets, escalation paths and reporting beyond the standard SLA.
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- Disaster recovery
- Restoring service after a major outage. On kloudease this is done through backup and recovery with Velero; RTO and RPO are defined per tier in the SLA. Geo-redundancy across sites will follow as an add-on.
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- Gardener
- An open-source project, originally developed by SAP, that manages Kubernetes clusters as Kubernetes resources – consistently on any infrastructure. kloudease orchestrates all clusters with Gardener; in the Managed Gardener use case we also operate your own Gardener landscape.
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- GitOps
- An operating model in which the desired state of your applications lives in a Git repository and is synchronised to the cluster automatically – traceable and repeatable. Flux is the standard on kloudease; Argo CD will follow as an add-on.
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- Helm chart
- A packaging format for Kubernetes applications that bundles all manifests of an application in a versioned way. On kloudease you deploy via Helm chart with rollback; you own the charts and releases.
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- Hyperscaler
- Large, global cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. kloudease runs there in your own account via BYOI, from Business.
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- IaaS
- Infrastructure as a Service: compute, storage and networking from the cloud provider – the layer beneath kloudease. The default is STACKIT through us (pay per use), alternatively your own infrastructure via BYOI. Infrastructure costs are added to the platform fee.
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- Incident hour
- The billing unit for SREaaS: every incident counts for at least one hour from the moment the alert is acknowledged, then in 30-minute steps – regardless of the cause. Every SRE package includes a monthly allowance; unused hours expire.
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- Ingress
- The entry point for external requests into the cluster. Pre-configured on kloudease with Traefik for routing, cert-manager for TLS certificates and ExternalDNS for DNS records.
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- kloudease API
- kloudease's Kubernetes-native management layer (CRDs based on kcp), through which clusters and services are created as objects. Your applications do not depend on it – they speak standard Kubernetes, even after an exit.
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- Kubernetes
- The open-source standard for running containerised applications. The interface for your teams on kloudease is standard Kubernetes – in hardened, dedicated clusters whose upgrades AOE takes care of.
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- Managed application
- A ready-made application on your kloudease platform, preconfigured and operated by AOE – such as agentic workflows with n8n or Corporate GPT with Open WebUI. The SLA and service description apply, also in the Starter tier. Part of the Run phase.
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- Managed Kubernetes
- Offerings in which a provider supplies Kubernetes clusters and runs the control plane, e.g. EKS, AKS or GKE. kloudease goes further: Kubernetes plus pre-configured platform services and operations by AOE – the same on every cloud.
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- Managed platform
- An area of the Run phase: platform base, workload and sandbox clusters plus add-ons, operated around the clock by AOE and billed through the monthly platform fee.
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- Managed service
- A database or data store such as Managed Postgres with pgvector or a key-value store based on Redis – production-ready and operated by us, with updates, backups, monitoring and the same SLAs as the platform. Part of the Run phase, billed as a monthly management fee per instance plus infrastructure.
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- Managed Services & Applications
- The range of managed services and managed applications that run on your kloudease platform and are operated by us. Software from vendors (partner software) is being added step by step.
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- MTTA
- Mean Time to Acknowledge: the time until an alert or incident is acknowledged. With SREaaS, this response time is guaranteed as per the SLA – not the resolution time for defects in the application code.
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- Multi-cloud
- The same platform on different providers, in parallel or one after another. With kloudease, the interface to Kubernetes and the platform stays identical – a change of provider affects the infrastructure, not your applications.
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- Node
- A compute node (virtual machine) in a Kubernetes cluster on which your containers run. The number and size of nodes per workload cluster depend on the tier.
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- Observability
- Insight into the state of the platform and applications through metrics, logs, dashboards and alerting. On kloudease, metrics from all your clusters come together centrally in Prometheus and logs in Loki; you find dashboards and queries in Perses.
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- Onboarding
- The Accelerate package that sets up the platform for operation and connects it to your environment: your own domain (DNS), single sign-on and, with a booked workload cluster, GitOps – without deploying an application yet. Booked once per platform, the package depends on your tier. Not to be confused with the one-off SREaaS onboarding per cluster, in which we take your application into operation.
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- Open Component Model (OCM)
- An open standard for describing and delivering software components in a versioned way. Every kloudease platform component is built as an OCM package, checked before rollout and delivered to your clusters via Flux.
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- P1 / P2
- Incident priorities in the SLA: P1 is a complete outage, P2 a partial outage of critical functions. Fixed response and restoration times apply per priority and tier. We treat critical vulnerabilities (CVSS 9.0 and above) as P2.
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- PaaS
- Platform as a Service: the platform layer between the infrastructure and your workloads. With kloudease it consists of Kubernetes, the platform services and add-ons – fully managed by AOE.
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- Perses
- An open-source tool for dashboards and queries from the CNCF ecosystem. On kloudease it shows the metrics and logs of all your clusters in one place.
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- Phases of working together
- Five phases from the first question to ongoing operations: Discover (understand and decide), Accelerate (into production with a defined outcome, booked once), Run (ongoing operations with recurring fees: managed platform, managed services, managed applications and SREaaS), Care (support for your team) and Enable (evolving your applications). You start wherever you are today.
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- Platform fee
- The monthly price for kloudease: the platform base per tier plus an amount per workload cluster. It covers platform operations; infrastructure, add-ons, managed services & applications and Care are added as needed.
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- Platform operations
- What AOE takes care of in every tier: operating and monitoring the platform around the clock, updates, security patches and incident handling for clusters and platform services. 24/7 applies to operations and monitoring and, from Business, to P1/P2 incidents – not to support: support and Care are available during the support hours of your tier.
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- Platform services
- The foundation in every cluster: observability, ingress and certificates, GitOps, secrets management, policies, backup and recovery, and single sign-on – pre-configured, integrated and kept up to date by us.
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- Platform team
- An in-house team that builds, integrates and runs a Kubernetes platform around the clock. 24/7 operations need several people to cover holidays, sick leave and nights. With kloudease you don't need a platform team of your own.
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- Price list
- Versioned kloudease price list with the list prices of the Starter, Business and Scale tiers, add-ons, managed services & applications, fixed-price packages and Care. Quotes refer to a fixed version. The Enterprise tier is agreed individually.
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- Production cluster
- A workload cluster on which your applications run in production. SREaaS is booked per production cluster; staging and sandbox clusters do not count.
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- Production Readiness
- A fixed-price review of a running workload against the kloudease production baseline – from requests and limits to probes, autoscaling and backup – with prioritised recommendations. Part of the Accelerate phase, as is Security & Compliance Readiness.
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- Proxmox VE
- Open-source virtualisation for your own data centre. kloudease turns it into a production-ready Kubernetes platform with the same platform services as in the cloud – via BYOI, from Business.
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- Requirements Workshop
- A one-day workshop on the target picture of your Kubernetes platform, with open decisions and recommendations. Product-neutral and available without kloudease – the typical starting point in the Discover phase.
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- RPO
- Recovery Point Objective: the maximum data loss after an outage, measured as the time since the last restorable backup. The values per tier are defined in the SLA.
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- RTO
- Recovery Time Objective: the maximum time until a system is restored after an outage. The values per tier are defined in the SLA.
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- Runbook
- Documented instructions for typical operating situations and incidents of an application. For SREaaS you own the runbooks of your application; we align them with you during SREaaS onboarding.
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- Sandbox cluster
- An additional, lower-priced cluster for trying things out and development, from Business. How many sandbox clusters are available depends on the tier.
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- Secrets management
- Secure storage and rotation of passwords, keys and certificates for applications and the platform. On kloudease with OpenBao, the open-source fork of HashiCorp Vault, from Business.
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- Security & Compliance Readiness
- A fixed-price review of a workload and its platform integration against the kloudease security baseline, such as RBAC, network policies and supply chain. The result is a gap report with prioritised recommendations – not a formal ISO or C5 audit and not a penetration test.
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- Service mesh
- An infrastructure layer for communication between services, for example with mutually authenticated encryption (mTLS) and traffic management. On kloudease, an add-on with Istio is in development.
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- Services cluster
- A dedicated cluster on which we run your managed services and managed applications such as Postgres, Redis, n8n or Open WebUI – separate from the workload clusters for your applications.
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- How responsibility is split between you and AOE: AOE is responsible for Kubernetes clusters, platform services and platform security; you are responsible for your application code, releases and Helm charts, and for monitoring and incidents of your application. With SREaaS, AOE also takes over operating your application.
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- Single sign-on (SSO)
- One sign-in for the platform, Kubernetes clusters and all kloudease managed services. From Business with federation to your own identity provider. SSO for your own applications is not included.
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- SLA
- Service Level Agreement: the contract that defines the service targets of the platform – availability, response and restoration times, RTO, RPO and retention periods. The values grow with the tier; a custom SLA is available in the Enterprise tier.
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- SLO
- Service Level Objective: a specific, measurable target within the SLA, e.g. availability per calendar month or the response time for a P1 incident.
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- Sovereignty
- The freedom to decide about your data, infrastructure and operations yourself, at any time. With kloudease in four dimensions: an open interface, free choice of infrastructure, operations in the EU and exit at any time.
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- SOW
- Statement of Work: governs arrangements negotiated individually with you. Where it differs from the SLA, the Statement of Work takes precedence.
- SREaaS
- Site Reliability Engineering as a Service: AOE runs your own application on kloudease – monitoring, P1 and P2 incident management around the clock and runtime stability, without an availability commitment for the application. Booked per production cluster as package SRE S, M or L with a fixed allowance of incident hours, from Business. 24/7 operation of the platform itself is included in every tier.
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- STACKIT
- European cloud and kloudease's default infrastructure. We provide the platform to you on dedicated STACKIT infrastructure, which you get through us – one contract partner, one invoice, pay per use, in every tier.
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- Support hours
- The hours during which support requests, Care and service requests are handled and less urgent incidents (P3/P4) are worked on – depending on the tier. Maintenance windows and agreed Kubernetes updates also fall within these hours. The platform itself runs around the clock in every tier; from Business, AOE also handles P1/P2 incidents at night and at weekends.
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- Tier
- The service level of your platform: Starter, Business, Scale or Enterprise. Availability, support hours and capacity grow with the tier; services such as BYOI or SREaaS are available from Business.
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- Vector DB
- A database for vector search, e.g. for semantic search and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) in AI applications. On kloudease as pgvector directly in Managed Postgres – no separate database, the embeddings sit right next to your data.
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- Vendor lock-in
- Dependency on a single provider, for example through proprietary interfaces or services of a cloud provider. kloudease relies on standard Kubernetes and open-source standards so you can switch provider and operator at any time.
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- Web application firewall (WAF)
- Protection for web applications against attacks at the application layer. Available on kloudease as an add-on (managed edge/WAF) per workload cluster.
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- Workload
- Your containerised software on kloudease – applications, APIs and services. You keep operating your workloads yourself or hand that over with SREaaS.
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- Workload cluster
- A dedicated Kubernetes cluster on which your workloads run – hardened and with all platform services. The number of clusters, nodes and node sizes depend on the tier.
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- Zero trust
- A security principle in which no access is trusted automatically – every request is authenticated and authorised. On kloudease implemented with single sign-on, policies and audit logging. Encrypted communication between services (mTLS) comes with the service mesh add-on.
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