Glossary

Cloud terms, DevOps concepts and infrastructure technologies — clearly explained for IT decision-makers. Each entry covers what the term means, when it becomes relevant, and how it proves itself in practice.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Cloud (8) DevOps (12) Security (3) Daten & Storage (2) Entwicklung (3) Infrastruktur (12)

A

API Gateway

An API Gateway is a central entry point for all API requests to your backend services. It handles routing, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring at a single layer.

AWS Cost Optimisation

AWS cost optimisation encompasses strategies and tools for reducing cloud spending on Amazon Web Services, including right-sizing, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, tagging, and automated resource management.

ArgoCD

ArgoCD is a declarative GitOps tool for Kubernetes that automatically synchronizes cluster states with Git repositories.

B

Blue-Green Deployment

Blue-Green Deployment is a release strategy using two identical production environments, enabling zero-downtime updates and instant rollback.

C

CDN

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a globally distributed network of servers that delivers content like images, videos, and web pages closer to the user, drastically reducing load times.

CI/CD Pipeline

A CI/CD pipeline automates the process from code changes through build, test, and deployment to production delivery. CI stands for Continuous Integration, CD for Continuous Delivery or Deployment.

Canary Deployment

Canary Deployment is a release strategy where new versions are initially rolled out to a small percentage of users to detect risks early.

Cloud Migration

Cloud migration is the process of moving IT systems, data, and applications from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud environment, aiming for greater scalability, cost efficiency, and resilience.

Cloud-Native

Cloud-native describes an approach to building and deploying applications that fully exploit cloud advantages. Core technologies include containers, microservices, CI/CD, and declarative APIs.

Container Orchestration

Container orchestration automates deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. It manages the lifecycle of hundreds of containers across multiple hosts.

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of integrating code changes into a shared branch multiple times daily and automatically building and testing them. This detects errors early and accelerates development.

D

DevSecOps

DevSecOps integrates security practices directly into the DevOps process. Instead of testing security at the end, it is embedded from the start in every phase of software development (Shift Left).

Docker

Docker is a container platform that packages applications with their dependencies into isolated, portable units. Your apps run identically everywhere – from laptop to cloud.

E

Edge Computing

Edge computing processes data decentrally near its source rather than in a central data center. This reduces latency, saves bandwidth, and enables real-time processing.

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine enabling full-text search, log analysis, and real-time queries across large datasets.

F

FinOps

FinOps (Cloud Financial Operations) is a framework for optimising cloud costs through collaboration between engineering, finance, and business teams, maximising business value per cloud euro spent.

Flutter

Flutter is Google's open-source framework for cross-platform app development from a single Dart codebase for iOS, Android, web, and desktop.

G

GitOps

GitOps is an operational methodology where Git serves as the single source of truth for infrastructure and deployments. Changes are managed via pull requests and applied automatically.

H

Helm Charts

Helm Charts are packages for Kubernetes applications that bundle all required resource definitions. They enable reproducible, versioned deployments with configurable parameters.

Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) automatically scales the number of pods in Kubernetes based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics.

I

Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of managing IT infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather than manual processes, enabling reproducible, versioned, and automated infrastructure provisioning.

Ingress Controller

An Ingress Controller manages external HTTP/HTTPS access to services in a Kubernetes cluster through rule-based routing.

K

Kubernetes

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. It orchestrates containers across clusters and is the de facto standard for container orchestration.

L

Lift and Shift

Lift and shift refers to migrating applications to the cloud without fundamental architectural changes. The application is "lifted" and "shifted" to the cloud – fast but not optimized.

Load Balancing

Load Balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers or pods to ensure availability, performance, and scalability.

M

Managed Kubernetes

Managed Kubernetes is a cloud service where the provider manages the Kubernetes control plane. You focus on your workloads while the provider handles updates, patches, and availability.

Microservices

Microservices are an architectural style where applications are divided into small, independently deployable services. Each service has a clearly defined responsibility and communicates via APIs.

Monitoring

Monitoring is the systematic observation of IT systems, applications, and infrastructure. It collects metrics, detects anomalies, and alerts on problems – the foundation for stable operations.

Multi-Cloud

Multi-Cloud refers to using multiple cloud providers in parallel to avoid vendor lock-in and combine the strengths of different platforms.

O

Observability

Observability is the ability to understand the internal state of a system from its external outputs. The three pillars are logs, metrics, and traces – together enabling deep insights into distributed systems.

P

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source relational database system with advanced SQL compliance, JSONB support, and proven data reliability.

Prometheus & Grafana

Prometheus collects metrics as time series, Grafana visualizes them in dashboards – together they form the standard stack for Kubernetes monitoring.

R

Reserved Instances

Reserved Instances are discounted cloud capacities that you reserve for 1-3 years. In exchange for the long-term commitment, you receive up to 72% discount compared to on-demand prices.

S

SLA / SLO / SLI

SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs define availability commitments, internal targets, and measurable indicators for IT service reliability.

Secrets Management

Secrets Management covers the secure storage, rotation, and access control of sensitive data such as API keys, passwords, and certificates in IT systems.

Service Mesh

A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication between microservices. It handles traffic management, security, and observability transparently for the application.

Shopware 6

Shopware 6 is a flexible, API-first e-commerce platform from Germany, ideal for B2B and B2C shops in mid-market companies.

Spot Instances

Spot Instances are unused cloud capacities offered at significantly reduced prices – ideal for fault-tolerant workloads and batch processing.

T

Terraform

Terraform is an open-source Infrastructure as Code tool by HashiCorp. It enables declarative definition, provisioning, and management of cloud infrastructure across providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Z

Zero Trust Security

Zero Trust is a security model that automatically trusts no user or device – not even within the corporate network. Every access is verified, authorized, and continuously validated.

Questions about a term?

If you want to know how a concept applies to your specific situation — get in touch.