Whitepaper Summary

Kubernetes promises scalability and innovation, but most organisations underestimate what it truly demands. Success requires more than deploying clusters - it means coordinating eight interdependent projects that together form the foundation of a sustainable, secure, and efficient platform.

These eight areas include refactoring legacy applications into containers, building a secure container supply chain, designing and operating the Kubernetes platform, modernising CI/CD pipelines, implementing zero-trust networking, establishing observability for ephemeral workloads, adopting everything-as-code, and creating a developer-friendly platform engineering layer.

The insight is clear: Kubernetes adoption isn’t a single initiative. When treated as one, it often takes three to four times longer, costs far more than expected, and stretches teams beyond capacity. The path to success lies in recognising these as separate but connected projects, each requiring time, ownership, and cross-functional collaboration.

By addressing one layer at a time - from infrastructure to developer experience - organisations can avoid the pitfalls of complexity, improve delivery velocity, and achieve true cloud-native maturity. Portainer simplifies this journey by providing governance, visibility, and control across every stage, enabling teams to focus on outcomes rather than orchestration overhead.

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