Standards

Open standards are central to the SCS project, offering easy access, development, and deployment for all market participants. Standardized interfaces allow applications to be seamlessly migrated or operated across different environments. For Cloud Service Providers, open standards enable compatibility and the creation of a network of federated cloud infrastructures, as advocated by the German Administrative Cloud Strategy. Users retain control over their data and can switch providers without vendor lock-in. Open standards thus promote digital sovereignty and provide the ideal foundation for successful digitalization in both the public and private sectors.

SCS Standards …

... from the Community
Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) is a community-driven open-source project that unites standards like OpenInfra interoperability guidelines and CNCF Kubernetes conformity.

... in the Reference Implementation
The modular and federable SCS open-source reference implementation automatically integrates all developed standards for IaaS and KaaS across various providers and data centers.

... in Collaboration
In 2023, a collaboration with the ALASCA association was initiated to advance open cloud standards. These standards contribute to underlying upstream projects and can be implemented in vanilla OpenStack or Kubernetes clouds.

Certification

SCS offers a certification framework that allows providers to verify and communicate their compliance with the standards. Cloud Service Providers using SCS are automatically tested daily, ensuring transparency. Successful tests grant them SCS compatibility certification. Providers with their own implementations can also become certified by adopting the open standards. In the future, the Forum SCS Standards will take over the examination and awarding of certifications.