kyma project

What kyma project does

Kyma Project is an open-source initiative that provides a curated set of Kubernetes-based modular building blocks for developing and running enterprise-grade cloud-native applications. Its core runtime combines best-of-breed open-source components (Istio service mesh, NATS messaging, OpenTelemetry observability, KEDA autoscaling, Cloud Events standards) with Kyma-specific controllers and operators, exposed through a Kyma CLI and a web-based Kyma Dashboard. The architecture is module-based: developers can independently install components such as the API Gateway, Serverless, Eventing, Telemetry, Cloud Manager, SAP BTP Operator, Application Connector, Registry Cache, and Docker Registry modules on any Kubernetes cluster.

The project was open-sourced in 2018 and has been maintained by SAP since 2019, serving as the foundation of SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime, which is the commercial managed-service offering within SAP Business Technology Platform. Kyma itself is free for self-managed use; commercial revenue accrues to SAP through the bundled BTP, Kyma Runtime offering, which includes Gardener-powered cluster management, SLA-backed availability, and preconfigured SAP system integrations (including SAP HANA connectivity and SAP Event Mesh). Distribution is dual-track: bottom-up community adoption via GitHub, Slack, Stack Overflow, and SAP Community, combined with top-down enterprise reach through SAP's global sales channel.

Kyma serves two primary customer segments: enterprise developers and DevOps teams building cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, and SAP customers and partners extending SAP systems with custom microservices. Named adopters include SAP, Accenture, NETCONOMY, Neteleven, Arithnea, Digital Lights, FAIR, Sysbit, Arineo, and dotSource. Kyma has native integrations across AWS, GCP, and Azure for infrastructure, and across Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, Kiali, Loki, Jaeger, and SAP Cloud Logging for observability, positioning it as a vendor-neutral, multi-cloud Kubernetes application runtime with deep SAP ecosystem reach.

Name

kyma project

Legal name

The Kyma Project

Website

https://kyma-project.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Kyma Project is an open-source, Kubernetes-based modular application runtime maintained by SAP, providing pre-integrated cloud-native building blocks for enterprise developers and SAP customers building extensions on SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Cloud-Native Application Platform

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (5415), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming Services (7371), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYHDABADAF

Container Platforms & Orchestration (Kubernetes)

Hardware, Technology & Telecom/Cloud & Data Center Infrastructure/Compute Infrastructure (Servers, Virtualization, Containers)

SECONDARYBPAEACAD

Cloud-Native Development (Containers, Kubernetes, Microservices)

Business & Public Services/IT & Digital Services (Managed Services, Systems Integration)/Cloud Services & Cloud Migration

SECONDARYBPAEAKAE

Cloud-Native Enablement (Containers, Kubernetes, Service Mesh)

Business & Public Services/IT & Digital Services (Managed Services, Systems Integration)/DevOps, Platform Engineering & SRE Services

SECONDARYHDABAJAF

Cloud-Native/Kubernetes Observability

Hardware, Technology & Telecom/Cloud & Data Center Infrastructure/Observability, Monitoring & AIOps for Cloud

Keywords

• Kubernetes application platform
• Cloud-native development
• Open-source middleware
• Service mesh modules
• Container orchestration

Headquarters

HQ city

Munich

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Open Source Distribution: Kyma is an open-source project available for free use. Organizations can download and install Kyma modules in their own Kubernetes clusters without licensing costs.
2. SAP BTP Kyma Runtime (Commercial): SAP offers Kyma as a managed service as part of SAP Business Technology Platform. Revenue is generated through SAP BTP commercial agreements, where Kyma runtime is bundled with Kubernetes cluster management powered by Gardener, regular updates, SLA-backed availability, and preconfigured SAP integrations.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Kyma Project is an open-source, opinionated set of Kubernetes-based modular building blocks that provides the necessary capabilities to develop and run enterprise-grade cloud-native applications. It bundles pre-integrated, enterprise-grade modules built on proven open-source technologies such as Istio (service mesh), NATS (messaging), and OpenTelemetry (observability), and is positioned as the open path to the SAP ecosystem for extending SAP and third-party services.

Product overview

Kyma is an open-source, opinionated set of Kubernetes-based modular building blocks for developing and running enterprise-grade cloud-native applications. It provides a core runtime platform plus a modular architecture with independently installable components. The core platform is extended by modules including: Istio (service mesh), API Gateway (API management), Serverless (functions), Eventing (event-driven architecture), Telemetry (observability), KEDA (autoscaling), NATS (messaging), Application Connector (external system integration), Cloud Manager (cloud resources), SAP BTP Operator (SAP integration), Registry Cache (image caching), and Docker Registry. Users interact through Kyma CLI or Kyma Dashboard. The project is the foundation of SAP BTP, Kyma runtime and supports both self-managed Kubernetes clusters and Gardener-powered managed offerings.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Kyma Runtime (Core Platform) An opinionated set of Kubernetes-based modular building blocks providing all necessary capabilities to develop and run enterprise-grade cloud-native applications, intended for enterprise developers, DevOps teams, and SAP customers and partners.
• Istio Module Service mesh module providing traffic management, security, and observability for microservices using Istio sidecar proxies.
• API Gateway Module Module for exposing and securing workloads using JWT validation, external authorization, and APIRules for API management.
• SAP BTP Operator Module Module for managing SAP Business Technology Platform services, including service instances, service bindings, and multi-tenancy support for SAP BTP.
• Serverless Module Serverless computing module for creating and running function code snippets (Node.js or Python) without managing servers.
• Eventing Module Module for event-driven architecture supporting NATS backend and SAP Event Mesh integration for publishing and subscribing to events.
• Telemetry Module Observability module providing telemetry pipeline API for collecting, filtering, and processing logs, traces, and metrics with OpenTelemetry native support.
• KEDA Module Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling module enabling scale-to-zero and event-driven autoscaling for workloads.
• NATS Module Module providing NATS messaging system as the eventing backend with JetStream support for event streaming.
• Application Connector Module Module for connecting external systems and services to Kyma through Application Gateway, Runtime Agent, and Compass integration.
• Cloud Manager Module Module for managing cloud infrastructure resources including NFS volumes, VPC peering, Redis instances, and clusters across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
• Kyma CLI Command-line interface for managing Kyma clusters, modules, and applications including commands for module catalog, provision, and app push.
• Kyma Dashboard Web-based user interface for managing Kyma resources, deploying applications, and monitoring cluster health.
• SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime (Commercial Managed Service) Managed commercial offering of Kyma bundled with Gardener-powered Kubernetes cluster management, regular updates, SLA-backed availability, and preconfigured SAP integrations, sold as part of SAP BTP commercial agreements.

Named customers10 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration15 records

AI capability2 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• SAPfoundationStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2019SAP is the primary maintainer and sponsor of the Kyma project. Kyma serves as the foundation for SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime, which is a core component of SAP Business Technology Platform. SAP provides development resources, infrastructure, and commercial backing for the open-source project. The partnership enables deep integration between Kyma and SAP services.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves7 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Red Hat OpenShift: Red Hat's enterprise Kubernetes platform offers an opinionated runtime with integrated service mesh, serverless, CI/CD, and observability—directly comparable to Kyma's pre-integrated module stack. OpenShift is the most established commercial competitor in the same product category.
• VMware Tanzu (Broadcom): Tanzu provides an enterprise Kubernetes application platform with service mesh, build services, and observability modules built on open-source projects. It competes head-to-head with Kyma for enterprise cloud-native workloads, particularly in large regulated environments.
• Rancher (SUSE): SUSE Rancher is a multi-cluster Kubernetes management platform with integrated application deployment tooling. It targets similar enterprise developer personas as Kyma and overlaps in offering pre-integrated modules for service mesh, monitoring, and ingress.

Broad incumbents

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): GKE is a managed Kubernetes service that, while not an opinionated application platform, serves as the default runtime for many enterprises evaluating alternatives to Kyma. It competes indirectly via integration with Google's broader cloud-native ecosystem.
• Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): EKS is AWS's managed Kubernetes offering with optional add-ons (EKS Anywhere, EKS Distro) that overlap with Kyma's modular approach. It is a broad incumbent in the same runtime category.
• Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): AKS is Microsoft's managed Kubernetes service with integrated developer tooling and Azure Arc for hybrid scenarios. It competes for the same enterprise developer audience as Kyma, particularly in Microsoft-centric IT estates.

Emerging players

• Gardener: Gardener is the Kubernetes-as-a-Service management framework that powers SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime. While Kyma sits one layer above Gardener, the projects are tightly coupled and both target enterprise Kubernetes provisioning at scale.
• Knative: Knative provides Kubernetes-based serverless and event-driven capabilities. Kyma's Serverless and Eventing modules overlap with Knative's serving and eventing offerings, making it a partial-overlap emerging player in the same cloud-native runtime space.
• Dapr: Dapr is a portable, event-driven runtime for building distributed applications across cloud and edge. It overlaps with Kyma's Application Connector and Eventing modules in addressing microservice integration complexity.
• Crossplane: Crossplane extends Kubernetes with control-plane capabilities for managing cloud infrastructure and services. It overlaps conceptually with Kyma's Cloud Manager module, both abstracting multi-cloud resource provisioning through Kubernetes-native APIs.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/kyma-project
• Xx.com/kymaproject
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/kyma-project

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about kyma project