AKS manages your Kubernetes cluster on Azure. Stakater Cloud delivers managed OpenShift with GitOps, CI/CD, full observability, and more — pre-wired, EU-hosted, operated by Red Hat Premier Partner engineers.
AKS is Microsoft's managed Kubernetes service on Azure. It provisions and patches your Kubernetes cluster — but the developer platform above Kubernetes is left entirely to your team.
AKS gives you upstream Kubernetes. OpenShift adds enterprise security hardening, a developer console, integrated image registry, and enterprise support — preferred by European enterprises in finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure.
AKS provisions and patches the cluster — the platform above is your responsibility. Stakater Cloud includes ArgoCD, Tekton, OpenBao, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, MTO, Velero — all managed.
AKS ties your workloads to Microsoft Azure. Stakater Cloud is operated by Stakater AB (Sweden), with default EU deployment in Amsterdam and flat monthly pricing.
The real alternative isn't switching cloud providers — it's spending 12–18 months building this yourself with an internal platform team.
A real migration plan, run alongside your team. No two-week sales pitch dressed up as discovery.
We scope your existing AKS setup — clusters, workloads, data volumes, integrations, compliance posture. Honest assessment of what moves cleanly and what needs care.
Your dedicated OpenShift cluster is provisioned in under 15 minutes, EU-hosted, with the full platform layer pre-wired — GitOps, CI/CD, observability, secrets, multi-tenancy.
Stakater SRE runs the migration alongside your team. Containerised workloads move first; data, integrations, and DNS cutover are scheduled around your risk tolerance.
No. AKS is managed Kubernetes on Azure. OpenShift is an enterprise application platform built on Kubernetes with security hardening, developer console, integrated tooling, and enterprise support from Red Hat.
No. AKS provisions the cluster. GitOps, CI/CD, secrets, observability, multi-tenancy, and security tooling are entirely your responsibility. Stakater Cloud includes the full platform managed.
Stakater Cloud is operated by Stakater AB (Sweden), with all data in the Netherlands. No US parent. AKS runs on Microsoft Azure, a US company. Cleaner EU data residency posture under GDPR / DORA / NIS2.
AKS is free at the cluster layer but you pay for Azure VMs, storage, bandwidth, and every platform tool — plus 2–4 engineers of platform work. Stakater Cloud is flat from €888/month with platform included.
Yes. We help teams migrate containerised workloads. Book a call to scope effort, compliance, and timeline.
Stakater Cloud carries a 99.9% uptime SLA on the cluster control plane. Standard support (8/5, ticket-based, < 12h critical response) is included with every cluster; Premium support (24/7, ticket + phone, < 1h critical response, named technical contact) is available for €2,000/month.
ISO 27001:2022 (information security) and ISO 9001:2015 (quality management), both independently audited annually. AKS inherits Microsoft Azure's certifications, but Azure is a US company subject to the US CLOUD Act — a separate concern from certification.
Yes. Velero-based backup of cluster resources and persistent volumes is included in the managed platform with documented restore procedures. AKS leaves backup design, tooling and operational ownership entirely to the customer.
Book a 30-minute call. We'll show you exactly how Stakater Cloud stacks up against AKS for your specific workload — no sales pitch, just an honest conversation.