ApeiroUI – a Visual Interface for Cloud Infrastructure

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Cloud and bare-metal infrastructure management is increasingly hampered by tool fragmentation and a lack of unified user experience. System administrators and DevOps engineers deal with an abundance of disconnected dashboards, CLIs, and scripts, making it challenging to maintain a coherent mental model of the system. This paper presents the design of ApeiroUI, a conceptual user interface for cloud infrastructure that aims to integrate management of cloud services, on-premises hardware, and user access into a single, human-centered interface. Developed through a collaboration between SAP and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, ApeiroUI was shaped using co-design methods. In two co-design workshops with developers and designers, we analyzed workflows and use cases that directly influenced the user interface design. The resulting prototype provides a unified visual language and introduces a novel context-based AI assistant. We describe the co-design methodology, key design decisions, and the lessons learned from this industry-academic project. Our case study demonstrates how a design-led approach can address DevOps tool fragmentation, improve infrastructure usability, and illustrate the value of industry-academic collaborations.