Looking forward by looking back: highlights from our annual OPEN'26
A year of strong growth
Before diving into market trends, we took a moment to reflect on our own journey. Despite a challenging economic climate, Kangaroot grew nearly 20% in turnover, surpassing the €10 million mark, and achieved 75% growth in profit. Perhaps most telling was the 50% growth in our managed services department; a clear signal of where the market is moving.
As technology grows increasingly complex, many organisations are finding it difficult to keep pace. Rather than building all the internal expertise themselves, they are turning to trusted partners to take ownership of specific platforms and services. This is precisely the space we are stepping into with what we call Boutique Managed Services.
We're a small scale, highly knowledgeable team that can run your open source organisation end-to-end — without trying to be everything to everyone
Three themes that are only growing in importance
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Sovereignty
Sovereignty has shifted from a geopolitical talking point to a genuine operational priority. Across Europe, we are seeing the first concrete requirements in public tenders mandating European-hosted or European-owned solutions. Initiatives such as OpenDesk in Germany, LaGaffe in France, and Membr in the Netherlands reflect a growing commitment to government-funded, openly developed platforms.
The ongoing VMware situation and the upcoming 20% price increase for Microsoft 365 are making this case more compellingly than any consultant ever could. And when organisations start looking for alternatives, they inevitably find their way back to open standards and open source.
Sovereignty is not a us versus them thing. It's about being in control of your own data but also about being ready to move away if a vendor changes strategy.
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AI
On the AI front, the conversation has matured from exploration to implementation. Organisations are asking practical questions: Which models do we use? Do we build our own infrastructure or rent capacity? How do we govern what our users can do? Tools like vLLM for model serving and emerging MCP governance frameworks are becoming essential pieces of the puzzle.
We are actively guiding customers through this process, from defining use cases and budgets to deploying scalable AI platforms on their own infrastructure.
Who's the owner of the code? It's not a company from one country. It's from everywhere.
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Security
Security remains a critical area of investment. Kubernetes adoption has grown rapidly, but governance around what gets deployed — and how vulnerabilities are managed — has not always kept pace.
We are launching a managed security service built around Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, offering continuous monitoring, vulnerability reporting, and hands-on remediation, priced per node per month.
You can have as many security tools as you like. If nobody is looking at the output, it's still just a tool.
What we are launching
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openDesk as a Managed Service
Fully managed and ready to deploy on your existing Kubernetes environment or on a cloud provider of your choice.
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Managed Kubernetes Security
Built around ACS for Kubernetes, this service ensures that security findings are acted upon; not just reported.
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EU Cloud Partnerships
We have selected Ionos in Germany and Exoscale as our preferred European infrastructure partners, offering managed Kubernetes, GPU capacity, and IaaS services that align with our sovereignty-first philosophy.
Closing thoughts
Open source continues to underpin the most critical technology decisions being made today; from AI infrastructure to government collaboration platforms to cloud native security.
At Kangaroot, our goal remains the same as it has been for 25 years: to help organisations navigate this landscape with confidence, make the right choices & retain control over what matters most.
We look forward to continuing these conversations throughout the year!
A glimpse of OPEN'26
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