It's not about a cheaper hypervisor. It's about needing less of one.
The licensing overhaul after the Broadcom acquisition forces something that would never have happened otherwise: a review of the entire virtualization strategy, with budget set aside and decision-makers in the room. Most use the moment to switch hypervisors. That solves the cost once. The question worth more is why so much of the fleet consists of virtual machines that exist to run a database, a queue, or an application — things that don't need a machine of their own at all.
Look at what's actually in the fleet
Go through your VM inventory and sort it into three piles.
Machines that run a service
Postgres, MySQL, Redis, RabbitMQ, object storage, application servers. Each instance got its own VM with its own operating system, its own patch cycle, and its own licensed cores. As managed services on Kubernetes they pack tighter and drop out of the licensing base.
Machines that run an application
In-house services that already are, or can become, containers. They move with the least friction and give the most back in developer experience.
Machines that must remain machines
Windows workloads, purchased systems, things with hardware dependencies or vendor requirements. They stay on a hypervisor, and that is perfectly fine.
The size of the third pile decides how much hypervisor you actually need to procure. For most, it is smaller than they think.
What Stackship does with the first two piles
Services and self-service for what doesn't need to be a machine.
Services instead of machines
Databases, cache, message queues, object storage, secrets, and functions as orderable services. No VM, no guest operating system, no per-instance patch cycle.
Self-service instead of tickets
Developers deploy applications and provision services via portal, CLI, or API. You keep control through policy and permissions instead of through a request queue.
Automation in the platform
Scaling, certificate management, backup scheduling, and workload monitoring are handled by the platform. Upgrades of the platform itself are yours to run, per our Lifecycle Policy — we don't operate your environment and don't promise otherwise.
Fixed price for the license term
The platform price stays fixed for the whole license term. It doesn't move because you pack the servers harder or because the core count in the machines changes.
Standards all the way
Kubernetes is an open standard. What developers build can be moved, and the skills can be hired on an open market rather than from a vendor's partner network.
A European vendor
Stackship AB is Swedish and European-owned. If you're leaving an American vendor over dependency concerns, the layer on top shouldn't reintroduce the same dependency.
Where Stackship can run
- On your existing VMware clusters. Kubernetes on virtual machines you already have, with Stackship on top. You don't have to settle the hypervisor question first, and you can start before the renewal is decided.
- On whatever hypervisor you land on. Proxmox, OpenStack, Nutanix, Hyper-V. We have no opinion on which, and we require no changes to it.
- On bare metal. Possible, and the option with the biggest effect on licensing cost — but be honest with yourselves about what it means. Bare-metal Kubernetes in production is its own project with its own skills profile. We don't deliver Kubernetes and don't take responsibility for the cluster.
- Through a partner. If you don't have the skills in-house, our partners deliver Kubernetes as an operated service with Stackship on top.
What Stackship doesn't do
- We don't replace vSphere or ESXi. If you need virtual machines, you still need a hypervisor.
- We don't deliver Kubernetes. You set up the cluster yourself or through a partner.
- We don't operate your environment. We make no availability commitments for an installation we don't run. Support and patch times are governed by the agreement; operations are yours.
- We don't migrate your VMs. We help you decide which ones don't need to be VMs. The move itself is done by you or a partner.
Frequently Asked Questions
The hypervisor, the price, and the responsibilities in practice.
Compliance
GDPR data residency, NIS2 controls, audit logging, policy as code, RBAC, and encryption. Built into the platform, on infrastructure you control.
Bring your VM inventory
Send over a list of what actually runs in the fleet and we'll go through how much of it needs to be virtual machines. No slide deck, just a walkthrough of your numbers.
Book a walkthrough