Glossary
DevOps, Kubernetes and sovereign cloud terms — defined plainly, by the Hidora team.
This glossary collects the concepts that come up most often in our conversations with Swiss technical teams: CI/CD, Kubernetes, observability, infrastructure as code, MSP, SLA, sovereign cloud. Each entry is written by Hidora DevOps engineers based on what we actually see in production at our clients. The goal isn't to rewrite official documentation, but to explain what genuinely matters when building or operating a cloud platform, with a particular focus on Swiss sovereignty constraints (FADP, GDPR), the patterns that work, and the ones that get expensive when applied wrong.
CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery)
CI/CD is the automated pipeline that builds, tests and deploys code on every change, turning releases into a routine, repeatable operation.
DevOps
DevOps unifies development and IT operations to ship code faster and more reliably through automation, observability and shared ownership.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Infrastructure as Code describes servers, networks and policies in version-controlled files so they can be reviewed, replicated and rolled back.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestrator that automates deployment, scaling and operation of containerised apps across server clusters.
MSP (Managed Service Provider)
An MSP runs parts of your IT for you, monitoring, incident response, patching and capacity planning, under a contractual SLA, freeing your team.
Observability
Observability is the ability to understand a system from its outputs, metrics, logs and traces, to answer questions you didn't know you'd ask.
SLA (Service Level Agreement)
A Service Level Agreement is a contract that quantifies the operational commitment between provider and customer, uptime, response time, and remedies.
Sovereign Cloud
A sovereign cloud is operated under a single jurisdiction's laws and physical control, data, keys and staff stay outside extraterritorial reach.