Kommunales Rechenzentrum Niederrhein (KRZN) is one of the ten largest municipal IT service providers in Germany, headquartered in Kamp-Lintfort. The organization assists its customers in developing, procuring and implementing modern information technology for the public sector.
KRZN supports more than 18,000 office workstations in city halls, district administrations as well as the respective school managements and processes the municipal data of over four million residents in North Rhine-Westphalia. A total of 46 local governments currently use KRZN's IT services.
At-a-Glance
In 2021, the municipal IT service provider KRZN began modernizing its application landscape with Kubernetes and SUSE Rancher Prime. Today, KRZN runs numerous critical government services on its cloud native platform and has largely automated day-to-day operations. With SUSE open source solutions, KRZN accelerates the digital transformation of local governments while strengthening the cyber resilience and digital sovereignty of its municipal customers.
Meeting the rising demand for containerized applications
KRZN provides its member municipalities and external customers with more than 150 applications supporting a range of government services, all hosted in KRZN data centers. As local governments increasingly digitize their processes, the demand for modern, cloud native applications is steadily rising.
“The application landscape has changed fundamentally in recent years,” says Jürgen Backes, head of the open source department at KRZN. “Our software partners, as well as our internal teams, are developing new software almost exclusively based on cloud native technology. At the same time, we are modernizing existing core applications and delivering them as containerized applications to our customers.”
KRZN anticipated the shift to new application architectures early on and began deploying its first applications via a Kubernetes infrastructure in 2021. Its primary goals were to improve the scalability and availability of critical applications and to deliver innovative services faster to all customers.
From its first major project, the KRZN team recognized the potential of containerized applications for local government. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations needed a secure collaboration solution for employees working from home. KRZN responded by offering the cloud native meeting platform BigBlueButton.
"Thanks to the container architecture in our data center, it was easy to set up a separate instance of BigBlueButton for each municipality," explains Backes. "In a traditional IT environment with virtual machines, the implementation effort would have been much greater. The Kubernetes infrastructure allowed us to quickly provide a secure, encrypted conferencing solution to support several thousand remote users."
KRZN realized that it could only meet the increasing demand for containerized applications with a powerful container management platform. The organization needed a centralized solution to manage multiple clusters efficiently, automate operations and enforce consistent security standards across its growing Kubernetes environment.
"SUSE is an important technology partner in shaping our digital sovereignty strategy. What started as a small Kubernetes team working with SUSE Rancher Prime has evolved into a dedicated open source department with around 20 specialists. Going forward, SUSE will help us strengthen our role as an IT service provider for a sovereign public sector."
Jürgen Backes
Head of the Open Source Department
Kommunales Rechenzentrum Niederrhein (KRZN)
Why SUSE solutions?
To find the right platform for its requirements, the IT team evaluated two solutions in proof-of-concept installations. Ultimately, KRZN selected SUSE Rancher Prime.
“One of the key factors for us was how well SUSE Rancher Prime integrated with our existing infrastructure,” explains Backes. “At the time, we were already using numerous open source technologies, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Prometheus, Grafana and Elastic Stack components. As a 100% open source solution, SUSE Rancher Prime was therefore a much better fit for our environment than proprietary alternatives.”
KRZN also needed a consistent approach to identity and access management across Linux and Kubernetes. The organization previously managed user authentication and access rights for its Linux servers through Active Directory group memberships. With SUSE Rancher Prime, KRZN could easily integrate Active Directory and extend it to its Kubernetes clusters using built-in role-based access control (RBAC).
KRZN also selected SUSE Security to strengthen protection across its Kubernetes environment. Integrated with SUSE Rancher Prime, the container security platform enables KRZN to safeguard cloud native applications through vulnerability scanning, image assurance, runtime security and network segmentation. With SUSE Security, KRZN can enforce strict zero trust policies that help protect the integrity of the platform and support compliance with public sector security requirements.
“Looking back now, the decision to go with SUSE was absolutely the right one,” summarizes Backes. “With SUSE Rancher Prime, we can efficiently operate our rapidly growing Kubernetes infrastructure, automate most of our day-to-day operations and securely deploy sensitive applications.”
The impact of SUSE solutions
Accelerates application deployment from days to minutes
With SUSE Rancher Prime and Kubernetes, KRZN can quickly deploy containerized applications for numerous municipalities. “From an operational point of view, it makes no difference to us whether we create one or 50 additional instances of a new application,” says Backes. “Compared to a traditional IT environment with monolithic applications, SUSE Rancher Prime accelerates the deployment of innovative services from days to minutes.”
The rapid delivery of cloud native applications helps KRZN drive the digital transformation of government agencies and educational institutions. Over 2,800 schools throughout North Rhine-Westphalia now use LOGINEO NRW, a digital school platform that will be hosted completely on SUSE Rancher Prime by KRZN. The platform simplifies the work of more than 320,000 teachers and students and makes it easier for them to collaborate digitally.
KRZN also leverages SUSE Rancher Prime to support smart city initiatives. This includes the CIVITAS/CORE open data platform. Cities and municipal enterprises use the platform to collect and analyze data from transportation, energy, environmental monitoring and other municipal services. The insights help them make data-driven decisions to improve the quality of life in urban areas.
Reduces operational effort through automation
KRZN’s Kubernetes environment rapidly evolved from an infrastructure for individual applications into a strategic platform for critical government services. The team now uses SUSE Rancher Prime to manage 37 production, testing and development clusters, comprising 162 nodes and approximately 7,600 pods.
SUSE Rancher Prime enables KRZN to manage its entire Kubernetes landscape through one central interface. Administrators have complete visibility of all clusters and can efficiently perform tasks such as provisioning, backups and troubleshooting.
Building on this foundation, KRZN has further advanced its automation strategy with Fleet (Continuous Delivery) in SUSE Rancher Prime. The solution continuously compares the desired configuration stored in Git repositories with the actual state of each Kubernetes cluster and automatically applies approved changes. KRZN uses the GitOps approach to deploy infrastructure components and applications in a standardized way. If a user accidentally removes or modifies resources, Fleet can automatically restore the defined state, ensuring consistent and reliable operations.
SUSE Rancher Prime also supports controlled self-service. Through GitOps workflows, application owners can independently deploy new software versions to development and QA environments. They can prepare production releases without needing support from the Kubernetes team. Fleet then automates the rollout process and ensures that every deployment adheres to the same standardized procedure.
“SUSE Rancher Prime empowers people to deploy applications without any Kubernetes expertise,” says Backes. “It allows us to spread Kubernetes technology across the organization without sending everyone to weeks of training.”
By combining centralized multi-cluster management with GitOps automation, KRZN has further reduced operational effort and established a scalable operating model for future growth. “We are now providing Kubernetes hosting for an increasing number of external customers. We would never have been able to offer this without SUSE Rancher Prime,” mentions Backes.
Strengthens container security and cyber resilience
With SUSE Security, KRZN is enhancing the resilience of its cloud native platform with zero-trust security. The solution enables the organization to define and enforce granular security policies and better protect containerized applications. By scanning for vulnerabilities and containing potential threats before they can spread across the Kubernetes environment, SUSE Security helps ensure critical government services operate reliably.
“We actively work with software vendors to promote security best practices. But we can't control how every software vendor builds its containers,” says Backes. “With SUSE Security, we can isolate workloads and prevent potential vulnerabilities from affecting other applications.”
Lays the foundation for digitally sovereign government services
”Open source technologies like SUSE Rancher Prime and SUSE Security give us full control over our infrastructure, applications and data,” says Backes. “At the same time, they reduce our dependence on proprietary platforms and providers."
Amid growing geopolitical uncertainties, KRZN has significantly intensified its focus on digital sovereignty. The IT service provider is expanding its use of open source technologies and currently runs most of its server infrastructure on Linux-based operating systems, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
"SUSE is an important technology partner in shaping our digital sovereignty strategy,” emphasizes Backes. “What started as a small Kubernetes team working with SUSE Rancher Prime has evolved into a dedicated open source department with around 20 specialists. Going forward, SUSE will help us strengthen our role as an IT service provider for a sovereign public sector."
What’s next for KRZN?
Looking ahead, KRZN plans to expand its digital sovereignty offerings with a new initiative. The team is currently running a pilot with an openDesk based open source workplace suite. KRZN aims to provide municipalities with a sovereign digital workplace as an alternative to proprietary workplace platforms like Microsoft 365.
Since the open source workplace suite is a Kubernetes-only solution, KRZN is running the pilot in collaboration with its internal innovation lab on SUSE Rancher Prime. The organization leverages the standardized platform and operational model it has established over the years to evaluate the new digital service.
"SUSE could help us take the next step toward greater digital sovereignty," explains Backes. "In the future, we may provide complete open source workplace solutions for local governments, built on an open and sovereign technology stack."