How Nelnet Transformed Multi-Cloud Kubernetes with Komodor

About Nelnet Business Services

Nelnet Business Services (NBS) provides innovative technology and financial solutions to the education sector, primarily serving the K–12 and higher education markets. Their portfolio spans tuition payment plans, school information systems, and educational training platforms — and they have to deliver applications that are always available, secure, and high-performing.

A complex environment slows business activity

With infrastructure running across both AWS and Azure, NBS operates a complex Kubernetes footprint supporting mission-critical applications for educational institutions. Without reliably high uptime, these institutions couldn’t rely on these applications around the clock. Maintaining the environment also slowed internal development velocity. 

NBS is also committed to evolving its DevOps approach, which provides developers and support staff with autonomy, ownership of their applications, and control over their areas of responsibility.

NBS wanted to unlock more value from Kubernetes, not just as an infrastructure layer, but as a platform to drive the business forward.

A desire to increase developer autonomy

Despite NBS’ best intentions, the company struggled to achieve these goals due to technical barriers in their Kubernetes workflows.

Their primary Kubernetes interface, Lens, required local installation on every workstation, intricate manual configuration, and came with a steep learning curve — all of which discouraged adoption and left most developers dependent on infrastructure teams for basic troubleshooting tasks.

In addition, repetitive requests via Slack, Teams calls, and support tickets frequently interrupted technical staff members, slowing resolution times and creating a bottleneck for platform and application teams.  

NBS also relied on a fragmented mix of monitoring and debugging tools, including Datadog, Azure Application Insights, and Grafana, each offering partial visibility and requiring deep Kubernetes knowledge. Non-admin users were locked out of day-to-day application management, stifling velocity and increasing operational overheads.

NBS needed a more accessible, consolidated solution to empower teams to operate Kubernetes, offer more autonomy over their applications, and meet their business goals. Without a change, team velocity and productivity would continue to suffer.

Komodor unifies operations and increases self-serve capabilities

NBS found the answer in Komodor, a centralized Kubernetes operations platform that simplified cluster fleet management across their complex, multi-cloud architecture.

As the only leading management solution designed for multi-everything environments, Komodor provides a unified operations view across NBS’s AWS and Azure cluster fleet, enabling proactive monitoring and accelerated troubleshooting in real time — all without context switching or requiring deep Kubernetes expertise.

While Komodor provides comprehensive event logging, the real power lies in transforming raw data into relevant, contextual insights across NBS’s stack. AI-powered troubleshooting automatically analyzes symptoms, suggests root causes, and guides users through proven remediation playbooks, dramatically reducing MTTR and cognitive load for Day Two Operations. Komodor even surfaces and resolves complex external dependency issues — like failed pod starts tied to incorrect IAM roles — with minimal friction. Non-technical teams can identify and resolve issues independently, heading off problems long before they impact production.

Crucially, the intuitive, SaaS-based UI of Komodor has lowered the Kubernetes learning curve and increased platform adoption. By enabling more teams to operate Kubernetes and self-serve, Komodor has dramatically decreased support requests, reducing Platform Engineering Team overhead and freeing engineers to focus on higher-value work. In addition to faster, more independent teams, NBS leverages Komodor’s Cost Optimization feature to right-size resources and prevent over-provisioning across applications.

Security and compliance have also improved. Komodor dramatically simplified user management across NBS’s Kubernetes environments with cross-cluster and cross-cloud access control. Komodor integrated seamlessly with NBS’s corporate identity provider, enabling secure onboarding and offboarding, while sophisticated RBAC, just-in-time privileges, and comprehensive auditing delivered the essential governance capabilities that previously required maintaining separate management tools.

Komodor’s flexibility makes it easy to deploy and manage Kubernetes add-ons like External DNS, Helm charts, and Cert Manager. When NBS requested further support for NGINX and Istio, Komodor responded quickly — often delivering new features within a single development cycle.

Faster delivery cycles and a 75% reduction in resolution times

Komodor transformed Kubernetes from a technical burden into a powerful asset that drives better business outcomes for NBS.

• A 200% increase in platform adoption has empowered developers and support teams to solve their own issues, speeding up delivery cycles.
• NBS has also experienced a 75% reduction in support tickets and resolution times, freeing up infrastructure teams to focus on innovation.

Logan Kampsnider, IT Director at NBS, said: “Komodor immediately unified our Kubernetes environments, reducing our time to resolution, and reducing our management overhead. Komodor has brought teams across the company together, making them more efficient and making their development process a lot quicker.”

By replacing fragmented workflows and tribal knowledge with a single intelligent platform, Komodor unlocked the value of Kubernetes and has helped NBS foster a culture of ownership and speed as they build for the future with confidence.