Platform engineering with CRDs is great—until you add a second cluster or cloud provider. Suddenly, you're locked into provider-specific APIs. Migrating a database from provider A to B requires rewriting manifests and workflows. This API fragmentation is the new vendor lock-in.

We propose the Platform Mesh: a layer providing generic, portable service APIs to consumers. Application teams request a generic Postgres instance, and the mesh intelligently provisions it on any capable backend (AWS RDS, on-prem operators), translating APIs on the fly. This enables seamless, policy-driven migration between providers—even with live data—creating true service portability.

This talk demonstrates how generic APIs strengthen cloud sovereignty by treating providers as interchangeable commodities within the native Kubernetes Resource Model. We'll explore alignment with the EU Data Act, which mandates provider switching capabilities and data portability for cloud services.