EuroCloud Native: Partner interview

The eco subsidiary association EuroCloud launched the EuroCloud Native (ECN) initiative in September 2020. The initiative sees itself as the voice of the cloud-native industry, makes the market transparent and brings providers, users and hyperscalers into dialogue. Fabian Dörk, Director Cloud Native Practice at Claranet, explains in an interview with ECN why we are delighted to be on board as an Alliance Partner.

EuroCloud Native (ECN): Why are you supporting EuroCloud Native as an Alliance Partner?

Fabian Dörk (FD): The paradigm shift of cloud-native approaches is to place value creation at the centre of all considerations - the specific applications and the data to be processed. These are the linchpin - the required infrastructure is merely derived from them: Application first, infrastructure second! This change in focus promotes innovation, as the complexity of the infrastructure and management layer increases, but software development is significantly simplified and therefore accelerated. This allows companies to focus more strongly on the development of products and services and strengthens their ability to innovate. As the market is only just beginning to anticipate this potential, we support the EuroCloud Native Initiative, as it brings together the interests of all companies that want to advance this important innovation topic. It is also an ideal forum for ensuring transparency in the market, discussing developments and cooperating on projects.

ECN: How have you specialised and positioned yourselves as a provider for the cloud-native market?

FD: Claranet developed very early on from a managed service provider with its own infrastructure into a managed cloud provider that helps its customers to fully exploit the innovation potential of public cloud providers. We have been Kubernetes pioneers from the very beginning and support companies on their specific journey to application modernisation.

As complexities do not simply disappear in the cloud-native context, but merely shift "towards the cloud", we offer our customers guidance and support for the entire lifecycle, from design and architecture to implementation and operation. Of course, we also support ongoing development so that companies can realise the full innovation potential of cloud-native solutions.

ECN: What do you bring to the initiative for ECN members?

FD: Claranet has a strong focus on the entire container and Kubernetes ecosystem. We are CNCF members, feel at home in the CNCF technology landscape and accompany our customers along the entire cloud-native trail. Thanks to our experience as a managed cloud provider, we also know that customers often prefer a gradual migration to the cloud-native world and what needs to be considered in hybrid scenarios. This also applies to the topics of security and managed services, which must also be fully guaranteed in agile environments.

ECN: What do you offer cloud-native users?

FD: Our promise is to shoulder the burden of day-2 operations for our customers. Cloud-native technologies are designed to be easy and quick to consume. Compliance, security and governance issues are often neglected, as are technical questions about scaling requirements, performance and business continuity. We think about these issues for our customers from the very beginning and help to resolve the conflicting goals of agility and reliability.

You can read the original interview with Fabian Dörk on the EuroCloud Native website and visit the roadmap of the initiative with current workshops, events and publications.

Further information on cloud-native strategies and the services we offer in this context can be found here: