Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform

Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform (KKP) is a multi-cluster Kubernetes management system from Kubermatic, a Hamburg company founded in 2016 as Loodse. It renamed itself in 2020. From one management plane, operators can provision, scale, upgrade and delete clusters on more than 20 public clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. It also covers VMware vSphere, Nutanix, OpenStack, bare metal through Tinkerbell, and edge locations. Each of these lifecycle actions can be triggered with an API call. Other features include a self-service portal where teams can request clusters, OPA Gatekeeper policy management, and centralized logging, monitoring and backup. It can import existing AKS, EKS and GKE clusters, and recent releases add K8sGPT-based debugging. Kubermatic says new upstream Kubernetes versions are supported within four to six weeks of release. The product fits enterprises, telecoms and platform teams that run large numbers of clusters across hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure, or that want to offer Kubernetes as a service internally. The Community Edition is free under Apache 2.0. The Enterprise Edition adds premium features for organizations running more than 50 clusters, plus official support, and is sold as a consumption-based subscription with no public prices. The main limitation for buyers is that KKP is software you run and operate yourself. It does not supply compute, and from the evidence gathered Kubermatic does not appear to sell a hosted cloud service. Small teams with only a few clusters will probably find it heavier than a cloud provider's managed Kubernetes.