01 / Managed OpenShift
What is managed OpenShift?
Managed OpenShift is OpenShift where the cluster operations — provisioning, upgrades, patching, monitoring, incident response — are run by a vendor instead of an internal platform team.
The cluster is dedicated to the customer, but the day-2 work of running it is outsourced. Different managed OpenShift offerings draw the line in different places. ROSA and ARO are joint Red Hat + hyperscaler products on AWS and Azure respectively. OpenShift Dedicated is Red Hat's own managed offering on AWS or GCP. Stakater Cloud is a managed OpenShift service operated by Stakater AB (Sweden) and hosted in the Netherlands.
02 / OpenShift vs Kubernetes
What is the difference between OpenShift and Kubernetes?
OpenShift is an enterprise application platform built on top of Kubernetes. It adds security hardening, a developer console, an integrated image registry, stricter RBAC defaults, and enterprise support from Red Hat.
Plain Kubernetes is the open-source orchestrator. OpenShift wraps Kubernetes with the pieces enterprises typically need to run it in production: opinionated security policies, an admin and developer UI, image management, build pipelines, and a vendor relationship with Red Hat for support and lifecycle. The trade-off is less flexibility on some edge configurations in exchange for fewer decisions to make.
03 / Developer platform
What is a developer platform?
A developer platform is the layer above the Kubernetes/OpenShift cluster that gives application teams a self-service path from code to production — typically GitOps, CI/CD, secrets, observability, multi-tenancy, image scanning and a developer portal.
The cluster on its own is not enough for application teams to ship safely. The developer platform is where ArgoCD, Tekton, OpenBao, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, multi-tenancy controls (e.g. MTO), backup (Velero), and image scanning (RHACS) live. Building this in-house typically takes 6–18 months and a team of platform engineers. Stakater Cloud's Managed KubeStack+ tier ships this layer pre-wired and managed.
04 / Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
What is an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)?
An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) is the same idea as a developer platform, framed from the perspective of the developer self-service experience: a curated, opinionated layer that lets application teams deploy and operate services without filing tickets with infrastructure.
IDPs typically expose golden paths (templates), self-service environments, and clear ownership boundaries between platform and application teams. A managed offering like Stakater Cloud removes the "who builds and runs the IDP" question — the platform team is included.
05 / Platform engineering
What is platform engineering?
Platform engineering is the discipline of designing, building and operating the developer platform that application teams use. It typically requires 3–6 senior engineers for a production-grade OpenShift platform.
Platform engineering covers cluster operations, the tooling layer above the cluster (GitOps, CI/CD, observability, secrets, multi-tenancy), upgrade cadence, incident response, and developer enablement. For most European organisations, hiring a full platform team is harder and slower than buying a managed platform. Managed offerings like Stakater Cloud replace the platform team with a vendor relationship.
06 / GitOps
What is GitOps?
GitOps is an operating model where the desired state of infrastructure and applications is declared in a git repository, and a controller (typically ArgoCD or Flux) continuously reconciles the live cluster against that declared state.
Changes are made by opening pull requests; the controller applies them. Rollbacks are git reverts. Audit trails are git history. Stakater Cloud uses ArgoCD as the bundled GitOps engine in its Managed KubeStack+ tier.
07 / Multi-tenancy (MTO)
What is multi-tenancy in Kubernetes and OpenShift?
Multi-tenancy is the practice of running multiple teams or customers on a single cluster with strong isolation between them — separate namespaces, network policies, quotas, RBAC scopes, and (sometimes) separate identity providers.
Multi-tenancy is essential for MSPs and ISVs delivering software to multiple end customers from one platform. Stakater's open-source Multi Tenant Operator (MTO) provides this isolation as a managed building block on Stakater Cloud.
08 / EU data residency
What is EU data residency?
EU data residency means customer data is stored and processed only on infrastructure located within the European Union, by an operator that is itself subject only to EU jurisdiction.
Hosting on an EU region of a US hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP) is not full EU data residency, because the parent company is subject to the US CLOUD Act. Stakater Cloud is operated by Stakater AB (Sweden) with data hosted in Amsterdam — no US parent, no CLOUD Act exposure.
09 / US CLOUD Act
What is the US CLOUD Act and why does it matter for EU customers?
The US CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a 2018 US law that allows US federal law enforcement to compel US-based companies to hand over data, regardless of where that data is physically stored.
For European organisations, this is the central reason why hosting on a US hyperscaler's EU region is not the same as EU data residency. The data may be in Frankfurt, but the operator is subject to US jurisdiction. Stakater Cloud is operated by a Swedish company with no US parent — no CLOUD Act exposure.
10 / GDPR · DORA · NIS2
What is the difference between GDPR, DORA and NIS2?
GDPR is the EU regulation governing the processing of personal data. DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) sets operational-resilience requirements for the EU financial sector. NIS2 raises cybersecurity requirements across critical-infrastructure sectors in the EU.
GDPR applies broadly to any organisation processing EU personal data. DORA, in force from January 2025, focuses on financial entities and their critical ICT providers — incident reporting, third-party risk, resilience testing. NIS2 (transposition deadline October 2024) expanded the previous NIS directive to cover energy, transport, banking, health, digital infrastructure and more. Stakater Cloud is operationally aligned to all three.
11 / ISO 27001 vs ISO 9001
What is the difference between ISO 27001 and ISO 9001?
ISO 27001 is the international standard for information-security management. ISO 9001 is the international standard for quality-management systems. Both are independently audited.
ISO 27001:2022 certifies that an organisation has a documented, audited information-security management system covering risk assessment, access control, incident response and continuous improvement. ISO 9001:2015 certifies a quality-management system — process documentation, customer focus, continuous improvement. Stakater is certified to both; audits are annual.
12 / ROSA vs ARO vs OpenShift Dedicated
How do ROSA, ARO and OpenShift Dedicated differ?
ROSA (Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS) and ARO (Azure Red Hat OpenShift) are joint Red Hat + hyperscaler products that run on AWS and Azure respectively. OpenShift Dedicated (OSD) is Red Hat's own managed offering on AWS or GCP — and the only managed OpenShift option on GCP.
All three are managed-OpenShift control-plane offerings: Red Hat operates the cluster, the platform layer above it is the customer's responsibility, and pricing is a Red Hat subscription plus the underlying hyperscaler costs. Stakater Cloud is a different category — operated by a Swedish company, hosted in the EU, bundled with the developer platform, and billed as a flat monthly subscription.
13 / Self-managed OpenShift
What is self-managed OpenShift?
Self-managed OpenShift is OpenShift installed, run and operated by the customer's own team — typically on bare metal, vSphere, or a hyperscaler. Red Hat sells the subscription and ships the bits; everything operational is the customer's responsibility.
A production-grade self-managed OpenShift platform typically requires 3–6 senior platform engineers across cluster ops, the developer-platform tooling layer, and on-call. The hidden cost is rarely the Red Hat subscription — it is the team and the time. A managed alternative like Stakater Cloud replaces that team with a vendor relationship.
14 / IaaS · PaaS · Managed platform
What is the difference between IaaS, PaaS and a managed platform?
IaaS gives you compute, storage and networking primitives. PaaS gives you a runtime to deploy applications onto. A managed platform sits between the two — a fully operated application platform (Kubernetes/OpenShift + developer tooling) where the cluster and the platform layer are both run for you.
Hyperscaler-native services (AWS, Azure, GCP) start at the IaaS layer; even their managed Kubernetes products (EKS, AKS, GKE) only give you the control plane. Stakater Cloud starts at the managed-platform layer: dedicated OpenShift cluster plus the developer platform, operated by Stakater.