8ra technologies put into practice
BWI – the German public IT services provider owned by the German Federal Ministry of Defence – is using technologies from the NeoNephos Foundation as it develops the Open Defense Cloud (ODC) for the German Armed Forces. This demonstrates how open-source technologies from the 8ra ecosystem can be applied in highly demanding operational environments.
The ODC is part of BWI’s multi-cloud strategy. It is designed to provide cloud services across central data centres, deployable IT infrastructure, and systems operating at the edge.
Reliability is crucial in this sector, and services must function even where connectivity is limited or temporarily unavailable. High levels of security, availability, and flexibility are central requirements.
A initial edge demonstrator as part of the ODC has been in operation since 2025. Further development is taking place in collaboration with industry partners and open-source projects from Germany and Europe.
Building on the NeoNephos Foundation
NeoNephos provides a collaborative development environment for the 8ra framework. It’s an example of technologies and architectural approaches from the 8ra Initiative being used in robust, enterprise-ready open-source cloud stacks.
Hosted by the Linux Foundation Europe, at NeoNephos companies work on interoperable cloud and edge technologies together. Many of these projects originated in the 8ra Initiative.
The Open Defense Cloud uses technologies from this ecosystem, such as Platform Mesh, Gardener, IronCore, and the Open Component Model, alongside Kubernetes and other open-source technologies. BWI is also developing tools for managing software in environments without a permanent internet connection and is making them available on OpenCode for further development.
In March 2026, BWI joined the NeoNephos Foundation as a Premier Member. The company is not only using technologies from the ecosystem but is also contributing to their further development.
For BWI, this supports the goal of building its cloud infrastructure on open technologies to reduce dependency and increase flexibility and modularity for the Bundeswehr’s field-deployable IT systems.
Applying 8ra technologies
Using NeoNephos technologies in the Open Defense Cloud is one concrete example of how work from the 8ra ecosystem can transition into operational environments.
Many of the underlying requirements for BWI are also central to the 8ra initative: applications and data need to work across different infrastructures, technologies from different providers need to be interoperable, and operators need to retain control over their systems.