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Discover our latest articles about cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes, DevOps, and modern software development. From practical tutorials to in-depth analyses.
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Stay up to date with our latest articles about cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes, and DevOps.
1210 posts
In many retail companies, an ERP system that has evolved over decades forms the backbone of IT. These systems are stable and proven, but were designed for a world before e-commerce. In today's omnichannel reality, they often become bottlenecks: The API interfaces are too slow for the webshop, real-time inventory queries overload the database, and new features take months to implement.
Polycrate API 0.11.27 brings K8sApp pod status tracking, DataSource integration for external feeds, dashboard redesign with SLO focus, and comprehensive UI modernizations.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.16 brings real-time pod status tracking for K8sApps, an MCP Knowledge Base for LLM-assisted block development, and host UID/GID environment variables.
The digitization of the Point of Sale (PoS) offers enormous advantages, but it also introduces a new threat: every connected device in the store—from smart refrigerators to handheld scanners—is a potential entry point for malware. A ransomware attack that cripples the checkout systems over the weekend not only leads to massive revenue losses but also significantly damages customer trust.
What was decided last week in the EU Parliament marks far more than a political declaration of intent. It is an overdue liberation from a dependency that Europe has not only accepted but actively deepened over the years. Our digital infrastructure—Cloud, collaboration, development environments, delivery pipelines, observability, security, increasingly also AI—is based today on platforms that neither belong to us nor are under our control. They are operated by US corporations, subject to US law, and in case of doubt, are not committed to European interests but to political decisions in Washington.
The load balancer is the front door to your infrastructure. Relying on standard cloud services like the AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) often means paying a "convenience tax." The billing model is opaque (LCUs), and technical flexibility ends where the cloud GUI stops. HAProxy, the global standard for high-load systems, gives you back control. It offers unmatched performance, granular traffic control, and deterministic costs—as a transparent ingress controller directly in your cluster.
The Container Registry is the heart of your software supply chain. Trusting cloud services like AWS ECR blindly treats your images merely as files in a bucket. Harbor, on the other hand, is an active security platform. As a CNCF-graduated solution, it offers integrated vulnerability scanning, image signing, and replication across cloud boundaries. It ensures that only secure, verified software reaches your clusters—and that you retain sovereignty over your artifacts.
In a multi-cloud world, security is not about location, but identity. Relying on cloud-specific tools like AWS Secrets Manager fragments your security strategy and creates blind spots. HashiCorp Vault is the industry standard to organize this chaos. It acts as a central broker of trust: managing not only static secrets but generating dynamic credentials "Just-in-Time" and providing Encryption-as-a-Service to protect sensitive data before it ever lands in a database.
Security often fails due to usability. While tools like HashiCorp Vault are powerful but operationally complex, and AWS Secrets Manager exists only in the cloud, Infisical bridges the gap to the developer. It is an end-to-end encrypted platform that securely manages secrets not only in the cluster but also on the developer's laptop (localhost). Infisical eliminates insecure .env files in Slack chats and offers a modern, intuitive interface for the entire team.
IoT sensors, application metrics, and financial data have one thing in common: they are time-based and generated in massive quantities. Traditional relational databases collapse under this write load. Cloud-native services like AWS Timestream solve the problem technically but link costs linearly to data volume. InfluxDB is the open standard for time series data. It offers unmatched write performance (ingestion), powerful data processing (downsampling), and full SQL compatibility—without the bill exploding when your sensors send more data.
Retail is faster than ever today. A new trend on social media, a sudden strategic shift by the competition, or the introduction of a new payment method – if a retailer can only react in six months, they've already lost. Often, slow IT processes and rigid infrastructures stifle innovative ideas before they reach the customer.
The vision of "Omnichannel Retail" sounds perfect in theory: order online, pick up in-store (Click & Collect), digital price tags that adjust in real-time, and intelligent inventory management across all locations. However, in practice, these concepts often fail due to the technological realities in stores.
Yesterday, the European Parliament made a decision that goes far beyond the usual Brussels symbolic politics in its scope. With a broad, cross-party majority, the EPP, Social Democrats, Liberals, and Greens adopted a report that unmistakably names Europe's digital reality: technological dependence on US corporations is not an operational accident, but a strategic risk. And it is no longer politically acceptable.
In modern retail, the fiercest competition no longer takes place on the shelves, but at the data level. Understanding what the customer will want tomorrow is key to winning. However, while retailers are investing millions in their digital transformation, many are making a critical strategic mistake: building their entire digital existence on the infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It's the nightmare of every e-commerce manager and retail CTO: Black Friday is approaching, marketing campaigns are in full swing, and just at the moment of the biggest customer rush, the online store crashes. Load times explode, checkouts fail, and the painstakingly acquired customers end up frustrated with the competition.
In retail, timing is ruthless. A system failure on a Saturday afternoon, during the peak sales hours, is not just an "IT problem" for a retailer – it's a business-critical emergency. When the checkout system fails, the online inventory doesn't sync, or the loyalty program app doesn't deliver data, the customer walks away. And most of the time, they don't come back that day.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.15 addresses the root cause of a critical bug in the TLS serialization of endpoints.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.13 introduces debug logging for operator startup and a NetworkPolicy fix for CNI compatibility.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.14 addresses critical bugs in backup schedule synchronization and endpoint TLS handling.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.12 addresses critical operator stability issues and corrects V-Level logging.
Polycrate API 0.11.23 addresses user API key authentication, adds API key admin UI, and extends contacts with a role field.
Polycrate CLI 0.29.11 enhances the diagnosis of TLS issues in API-managed endpoints with debug logging.
Observability determines how well systems can be understood, operated, and evolved. It is not an add-on for operations but a core capability of modern platforms. Accordingly, the question of **where** observability is anchored is relevant: as a consumed cloud service or as an independent, controllable architecture.
CI/CD is often treated as a tool question: Which service, which pipeline, which provider? In reality, CI/CD is an **architectural principle decision**. It defines how deployments are conceptualized, how tightly platforms are bound to providers, and how controllable systems remain in the long term.
