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Stackit Fibre Optics
March 20, 2026 |

STACKIT 7: Getting Started with STACKIT : Trials, Onboarding, and First Steps

STACKIT 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk You Know the One Every organisation has one. The database that has been there since before most of the current staff joined. The one that only runs on a specific laptop. The one where everyone knows not to click the wrong button. The one built by someone who retired years ago, leaving nobody quite sure how it works. It holds your member records. Your client files. Your financial history. Your grant allocations. In some cases, it holds information about vulnerable people – children, patients, or service users – that
Stackit Fibre Optics
March 13, 2026 |

STACKIT 6: STACKIT for Financial Services and the Public Sector

STACKIT 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk You Know the One Every organisation has one. The database that has been there since before most of the current staff joined. The one that only runs on a specific laptop. The one where everyone knows not to click the wrong button. The one built by someone who retired years ago, leaving nobody quite sure how it works. It holds your member records. Your client files. Your financial history. Your grant allocations. In some cases, it holds information about vulnerable people – children, patients, or service users – that
Stackit Fibre Optics
March 12, 2026 |

STACKIT 5: Migrating from AWS to STACKIT A Practical Checklist

STACKIT 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk You Know the One Every organisation has one. The database that has been there since before most of the current staff joined. The one that only runs on a specific laptop. The one where everyone knows not to click the wrong button. The one built by someone who retired years ago, leaving nobody quite sure how it works. It holds your member records. Your client files. Your financial history. Your grant allocations. In some cases, it holds information about vulnerable people – children, patients, or service users – that
Stackit Fibre Optics
March 7, 2026 |

STACKIT 3: Data Sovereignty, CLOUD Act, and DORA Compliance with STACKIT

STACKIT 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk You Know the One Every organisation has one. The database that has been there since before most of the current staff joined. The one that only runs on a specific laptop. The one where everyone knows not to click the wrong button. The one built by someone who retired years ago, leaving nobody quite sure how it works. It holds your member records. Your client files. Your financial history. Your grant allocations. In some cases, it holds information about vulnerable people – children, patients, or service users – that
Stackit Fibre Optics
March 5, 2026 |

STACKIT 2: STACKIT vs AWS Core Services Compared

STACKIT vs AWS — Core Services Compared If you have built your infrastructure on AWS, the first practical question when looking at STACKIT is simple: what replaces what? This post maps STACKIT’s core services against their AWS equivalents. STACKIT does not mirror every service in the AWS catalogue, but for standard production workloads, the coverage is strong. Compute: EC2 → STACKIT Compute Engine STACKIT Compute Engine provides virtual machine instances built on OpenStack Nova. The configuration model is familiar: you choose vCPUs, RAM, and a boot image, much like you would with EC2. Flavours, which are the OpenStack term for
Stackit Fibre Optics
March 2, 2026 |

STACKIT 1: The Case for German Sovereign Cloud

The Case for German Sovereign Cloud — Why STACKIT Exists STACKIT is not a startup cloud provider trying to catch up with AWS on features. It is the cloud infrastructure built and operated by Schwarz Digits, the technology arm of the Schwarz Group, the German company behind Lidl and Kaufland. The Schwarz Group operates in 32 countries, serves hundreds of millions of customers each year, and processes a volume of transactions that puts it among the largest IT operators in Europe. STACKIT was built to support that scale, under German law and on German soil. Opening it up to external
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
September 6, 2025 |

Migration 6: Why Legacy Database Projects Take Longer Than You’d Expect — And Why That Works in Your Favour

Migration 6: Why Legacy Database Projects Take Longer Than You’d Expect — And Why That Works in Your Favour A Question We Get Asked a Lot How long will this take? The honest answer is: longer than you might expect. A straightforward migration from a legacy system to a modern cloud-hosted application will usually take several months, from the first conversation to go-live. A larger or more complex project may take longer. Before that puts you off, it is worth explaining what that time actually involves – and why the timeline often works in your favour. The Complexity Is on
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
August 29, 2025 |

Migration 5: Still Running on Access, FoxPro or an Old Bespoke System? You’re Not Alone

Migration 5: Still Running on Access, FoxPro or an Old Bespoke System? You’re Not Alone You Are in Good Company If you are still running a legacy database system, it can feel as though you are the last organisation on earth still doing it. You are not. Many charities, NGOs, professional bodies, and voluntary organisations across Ireland and the UK are in exactly the same position. These systems were well built for their time. They did the job, and because they did, nobody replaced them. Now the world has moved on, and they have not. Here is a plain-language guide
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
August 22, 2025 |

Migration 4: If the Server Dies on Monday, What Happens on Tuesday?

Migration 4: If the Server Dies on Monday, What Happens on Tuesday? The Question Nobody Wants to Answer Ask yourself this: if the system your organisation relies on every day stopped working tomorrow morning – crashed, corrupted, or refusing to start – what would you do? Not in theory. In practice. Who would you call? What would you do for the people who need that data today? How long could your organisation function without it? Most people, when they think it through, do not like the answer. How Legacy Systems Fail Legacy database failures are rarely dramatic. More often than
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
August 15, 2025 |

Migration 3: What Happens When Your GDPR Officer Opens Pandora’s Box

Migration 3: What Happens When Your GDPR Officer Opens Pandora’s Box The Audit That Changes Everything More charities and voluntary organisations across Ireland and the UK are now hiring GDPR officers or undergoing external GDPR audits as a condition of funding or accreditation. For most organisations, the day-to-day systems seem fine. The website has a privacy policy. Staff understand the basics of data handling. Email is managed appropriately. And then the auditor looks at the database. What They Typically Find In legacy systems – Access databases, FoxPro, and bespoke systems built in the 1990s or 2000s – GDPR officers often
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
August 8, 2025 |

Migration 2: What Does It Cost to Migrate a Legacy Database?

Migration 2: What Does It Cost to Migrate a Legacy Database? Let’s Talk Money First Most people only get to the pricing conversation at the end of a long process, after discovery calls, requirements gathering, and proposals. By that stage, they may have spent hours only to discover the budget does not match the reality. We would rather save everyone from that frustration. So here are some honest ballpark figures. Ballpark Figures Simple system migration:  (Access, FoxPro, Excel, dBase to a modern cloud-hosted web application): from €6,000 ex VAT Larger system: with reports, APIs, integrations, and complex workflows: from €12,000
Old school floppy disk drive data storage
August 1, 2025 |

Migration 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk

Migration 1: Your Charity’s Oldest Database Might Be Its Biggest Risk You Know the One Every organisation has one. The database that has been there since before most of the current staff joined. The one that only runs on a specific laptop. The one where everyone knows not to click the wrong button. The one built by someone who retired years ago, leaving nobody quite sure how it works. It holds your member records. Your client files. Your financial history. Your grant allocations. In some cases, it holds information about vulnerable people – children, patients, or service users – that
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