Introduction
In the rapidly evolving landscape of data management and analytics, organizations face the dual challenge of harnessing cutting-edge technology while maintaining control over their digital infrastructure. The Stackable Data Platform emerges as a modern, open-source solution designed to address these needs. Born from the open-source community in 2020 and based in Wedel, Germany, Stackable provides a comprehensive data platform that prioritizes flexibility, security, and digital sovereignty. This article provides a detailed examination of the Stackable Data Platform, exploring its foundational principles, architectural design, key features, and the company's vision for the future of data management. By leveraging a Kubernetes-native approach, Stackable offers a unified environment for deploying and managing a wide array of open-source data tools, positioning itself as a compelling alternative to proprietary, vendor-locked systems.
History and Origins
The genesis of Stackable is rooted in the open-source community ethos. The company was officially founded in 2020, emerging from the team's experience in creating and enhancing page-building tools. Initially, the team identified the potential of the new WordPress editor, Gutenberg, and began developing blocks to enhance its capabilities. This project, which started as a side initiative, evolved into a full-fledged product. However, the core mission of the company expanded beyond WordPress to address the broader challenges of big data. By 2025, Stackable celebrated its fifth anniversary, marking a period of significant development and milestone achievements. The company's leadership, including CTO & Co-Founder Lars Francke, CPO & Co-Founder Sönke Liebau, and COO Dr. Stefan Igel, brings together decades of experience in IT project business and the introduction of data platforms for business intelligence and analytics. This background has informed the company's focus on creating transparent products and delivering qualified support at fair prices.
Core Philosophy: Open Source and Digital Sovereignty
Stackable’s foundational principle is a commitment to open-source software. The platform is built entirely on non-restrictive, open-source licensing, meaning users are free to use the software at any scale without proprietary constraints. This approach is not merely a technical choice but a philosophical stance; the company is convinced that the future of software development lies in open source. By making its platform's source code freely available, Stackable doubles down on transparency, allowing for community scrutiny, collaboration, and innovation.
This commitment directly supports the concept of digital sovereignty. Stackable is designed to run anywhere Kubernetes runs—on-premises, in private clouds, in public clouds, and even on laptops. This cloud-agnostic nature ensures that organizations are not tethered to a specific vendor's ecosystem. They retain full control over their data and infrastructure, a critical factor in an era of increasing regulatory scrutiny and geopolitical data concerns. The platform's alignment with the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), adherence to CSAF standards including VEX, and provision of comprehensive Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) further underscore its dedication to security and compliance.
Architectural Overview and Product Discovery
The Stackable Data Platform is engineered as a cohesive system of interconnected components, managed through Kubernetes operators. At its heart is the concept of the Custom Resource (CR), a declarative configuration that defines the desired state of a data product instance. For example, a DruidCluster for Apache Druid is a custom resource that contains all necessary configuration details, such as the services to connect to, the number of replicas, and resource allocations.
The platform employs a sophisticated operator pattern. An operator reads the custom resource and translates it into specific Kubernetes resources, orchestrating the deployment and management of the data product. A key feature of this architecture is the discovery ConfigMap. For every product instance, the operator creates a ConfigMap with the same name as the product instance. This ConfigMap contains connection information, enabling other products to discover and connect to it seamlessly.
For instance, Apache ZooKeeper is a dependency for many other products like Apache HDFS and Apache Druid. Instead of manually configuring connection strings, the HDFS and Druid resource definitions can simply reference the ZooKeeper cluster by name. The operators then use the discovery ConfigMap to automatically configure the respective Pods. This automated service discovery significantly simplifies the management of complex, multi-component data systems. The architecture also supports creating discovery ConfigMaps manually for products not operated by a Stackable operator, ensuring extensibility.
Key Features and Capabilities
Stackable offers a suite of features designed to enhance performance, security, and usability.
Unified Open-Source Tooling
Stackable provides a single source for all the open-source tools required for a modern data platform. This eliminates the need for a patchwork of disparate vendors and tools, offering a single point of contact and support. The platform supports a wide range of data products, each managed by dedicated operators. For example, an Apache HDFS cluster, which comprises DataNodes, NameNodes, and JournalNodes, can be managed as a cohesive unit through a custom resource.
Performance and Scalability
The platform is engineered for high performance and scalability. It ensures efficient resource use, allowing organizations to scale their data infrastructure smarter. Stackable has successfully served clients with various demanding use cases, demonstrating good performance metrics across many scenarios. The company offers performance assessments tailored to specific needs to validate how Stackable can meet or exceed requirements.
Enhanced Security and Cyber Resilience
Security is a paramount concern. Stackable offers constantly updated, robust security measures to protect against data breaches. The platform's alignment with the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act, in-depth Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) assessment, and adherence to CSAF standards with VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability Exchange) provide superior risk management. The comprehensive SBOMs offer full transparency into the software components, a critical requirement for modern compliance and security audits.
Migration and Integration
Stackable is built on open-source principles, ensuring high compatibility with a wide range of tools and systems. The platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure. The company employs advanced migration tools and protocols to ensure data integrity and continuity. An experienced team works closely with clients to develop customized migration plans that prioritize data safety and minimize operational disruption. The process is transparent, with a detailed cost breakdown provided upfront.
Community and Support
Stackable fosters a vibrant community. The company encourages contributions through pull requests, issues, or GitHub comments. For commercial users, Stackable offers comprehensive training and robust support. This includes detailed documentation, hands-on training sessions, and ongoing support to address challenges. The pricing model for business support is described as fair, simple, and easy to understand, with no hidden costs or proprietary add-ons.
Technological Stack and Command-Line Interface
The platform’s command-line utility, stackablectl, is designed to be similar to kubectl for ease of use. It allows users to deploy and manage Stackable data apps on Kubernetes with a one-line startup command. With stackablectl, users can create, delete, and update components, view their new cluster, and invoke sample applications.
The platform also features unique differentiating product capabilities, such as: * Designing and managing data architectures via infrastructure-as-code. * Crafting and maintaining security policies as code using OpenPolicyAgent. * Comprehensive, integrated log aggregation. * Natively integrated monitoring with export of all relevant metrics.
Practical Applications and Use Cases
Stackable is designed for the development of individual data products and use in the data mesh architecture. Its modular approach allows organizations to build tailored data solutions. The platform's ability to run on various environments—from laptops for development to large-scale public cloud deployments—makes it versatile for different stages of the data lifecycle.
For example, a data engineering team can use stackablectl to spin up a local Kubernetes cluster on their laptop, deploy a test environment with Apache Airflow and Apache Spark, and then use the same infrastructure-as-code definitions to deploy a production-grade cluster in a private cloud. The discovery ConfigMaps ensure that services like Airflow can automatically discover and connect to the Spark cluster without manual configuration.
Care and Maintenance
While Stackable is a software platform, its operational "care" revolves around its open-source nature and support model. The platform is designed for long-term support (LTS) across multiple releases, ensuring stability and clear migration paths. Regular and gradual updates are provided, keeping teams at the forefront with the newest features and versions in the data tech world. The community-driven innovation model ensures that the platform benefits from the latest open-source advances cost-effectively. For commercial users, the robust support and training ensure that teams are well-equipped to maintain and evolve their data platforms.
Conclusion
The Stackable Data Platform represents a significant evolution in data management, championing the principles of open source, transparency, and digital sovereignty. By providing a unified, Kubernetes-native environment for a wide array of open-source data tools, it addresses the critical needs of modern organizations for flexibility, security, and control. From its community-driven origins in 2020 to its current status as a market leader, Stackable has consistently focused on collaboration over competition. Its architectural design, featuring custom resources, operators, and automated service discovery, simplifies the complexity of managing distributed data systems. With features like infrastructure-as-code, comprehensive security measures, and a fair pricing model, Stackable offers a compelling alternative to proprietary solutions. As data continues to grow in volume and importance, platforms like Stackable that prioritize openness and user empowerment are poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of data analytics.