Source: Own Illustration
How can universities jointly develop modern cloud services while maintaining their digital sovereignty? This is precisely where the Kube3 collaboration comes in. Universities and research institutions from Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) are working together to establish a cross-state Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) infrastructure. The goal is to develop common standards and future-proof solutions that can be used by all participating institutions in the long term. The NRW portion of the Kube3 federation will initially run through spring 2028.
Kubernetes or KaaS: What’s the Difference?
Kubernetes is an open-source platform for container orchestration. Among other things, it automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. However, anyone who runs Kubernetes themselves is also responsible for installation, configuration, networking, updates, and maintenance.
Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS), on the other hand, provides Kubernetes as a managed service. The provider handles operations, maintenance, and aspects such as security and high availability. This allows users to utilize Kubernetes without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. The individual Kubernetes clusters are isolated from one another and multi-tenant, ensuring that other users’ data and resources remain protected.
Shared Infrastructure for Greater Digital Sovereignty
The goal of Kube3 is to create standardized blueprints for cloud-based infrastructures and to test them across national borders. The resulting solutions are intended to be immediately deployable while offering sufficient flexibility to meet the individual requirements of each university.
This close collaboration leads to the development of common standards, workflows, and best practices. At the same time, the project strengthens the digital sovereignty of the universities, as data sovereignty is maintained and open technologies are used. Furthermore, the collaboration increases the resilience of the infrastructure, as components and concepts can be exchanged between locations and jointly refined.
From Infrastructure to Operational Deployment
Kube3 is divided into two areas of focus. First, the technical foundations for a shared KaaS infrastructure will be established, and infrastructures will be set up at multiple locations. Subsequently, these infrastructures will be tested and continuously refined in the participating federal states with the help of specific services, with a focus on their intended uses and scalability.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the focus is particularly on applications such as Coscine.nrw, git.nrw, KI:Connect, and JupyterHub.nrw. In the future, services from the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), the National High-Performance Computing (NHR), and other central offerings will also be able to use the shared infrastructure.
During the project’s duration, there will also be an opportunity to open the KaaS layer to additional institutions within the collaboration, thereby enabling federated collaboration across state borders.
Open Standards as a Common Foundation
Standardization is a central component of Kube3. As its technological foundation, the project is based on the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS), a European initiative for open cloud and container standards. The goal is to create transparent and compatible infrastructures that ensure data protection, data integrity, and data sovereignty within Europe.
Participating Institutions
A total of eight universities and research institutions are participating in Kube3:
- Baden-Württemberg: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Heidelberg University, and the University of Tübingen
- Bavaria: Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) and the University of Bamberg
- North Rhine-Westphalia: RWTH Aachen University, the University of Münster, and the University of Cologne
Cross-State Collaboration
An important component of the project is the regular exchange between the partners. In May 2026, the Kube3 cooperation project group met for two days at KIT in Karlsruhe to lay the groundwork for the collaboration and further develop their shared vision. To continuously drive the project forward, quarterly online meetings and semi-annual in-person meetings will be held in the future.
You can find all additional information about Kube3 on the Kube3 website.
Responsible for the content of this article is Hannah Loock.
Leave a Reply