Case study
A government agency's path to Kubernetes
The challenge wasn't choosing between technologies - it was finding a platform that could unite Cloud Foundry expertise with Kubernetes capabilities while working with existing infrastructure, not against it.
Starting point
The modern public sector operates under a dual pressure: deliver reliable services to millions while keeping pace with technological evolution. For Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch agency responsible for critical national infrastructure, this tension materialized in their platform architecture.
Development teams had already embraced containers, running workloads onDocker Swarm - maintained internally with considerable operational friction.The organization recognized Kubernetes as the path forward, but months of testing a commercial platform revealed fundamental incompatibilities with their vSphere/NSX-T environment. The platform was unreliable and complex to deploy.
Meanwhile, the platform team - experienced with Cloud Foundry - lacked Kubernetes expertise, leaving development teams without proper support fort heir containerized workloads. A government agency with mission-critical responsibilities, teams ready to move forward, and no viable platform to get them there.
From platform failure to infrastructure alignment
Approach
Understanding why the commercial platform failed
We started by understanding why the commercial platform failed. The issue wasn't Kubernetes itself - it was a platform designed to dictate infrastructure requirements rather than adapt to existing environments. Rijkswaterstaat's vSphere/NSX-T setup was non-negotiable; any solution had to work within those constraints.
Cloudboostr was customized to integrate directly with the agency's existing network components. The same environment that caused the commercial platform to struggle became the foundation for a stable deployment.
Knowledge transfer as delivery method
The installation process doubled as capability building. GrapeUp engineers worked alongside Rijkswaterstaat's platform team, verifying integrations and solving challenges in real-time. This wasn't training followed by handoff - it was collaborative problem-solving on production systems.
The agency's Cloud Foundry expertise wasn't replaced; it was extended.Teams gained Kubernetes capabilities while maintaining their existing platform knowledge, creating internal support capacity that hadn't existed before.
Breaking The Linear
Instead of replacing Cloud Foundry with Kubernetes, we deployed both on a unified stack. The commercial platform failed by demanding infrastructure adaptation; we succeeded by adapting to infrastructure reality.
From platform constraints to infrastructure flexibility
Summary
Rijkswaterstaat came to GrapeUp after a commercial platform failed to meet their requirements. They gained something more valuable than a working Kubernetes cluster: a unified cloud-native stack that supports both their CloudFoundry heritage and their container-native future.
The agency's platform team - previously limited to Cloud Foundry support- now operates a complete Kubernetes environment. Development teams that were manually managing Docker Swarm deploy to fully automated clusters. And a government organization serving millions of Dutch citizens can run mission-critical systems on infrastructure that fits their environment.
.webp)