VMware is a virtualization platform for virtual machine management. It’s very good at this function, and it’s generally stable and easy to use. UBX Cloud used it extensively until about two years ago, when owner Broadcom decided to jack up the licensing fees and largely decimate the supporting ecosystem to the point where VMware became economically implausible for UBX Cloud clients.

We needed a solution, and we sicced Grandpa Internet himself – our own Reynaldo Martinez – on the problem.

The solution was OpenStack – an open-source, modular cloud platform that’s free to use but presents its own costs in terms of setup expenses and the need for talented people to operate it. OpenStack already had a limited presence within the UBX Cloud tech stack, but this moment called for us to rely on it much more extensively.

Could we switch the affected clients to OpenStack seamlessly? And if we did, would the cost/benefit analysis end up in our (and their) favor?

Grandpa Internet led the migration effort, which required a great deal of time and effort on the part of the UBX Cloud team. But the team’s dedication mitigated the extra personnel costs a lot of companies have when setting up OpenStack.

“This was so worth the effort,” says UBX Cloud President Steven Panovski. “With OpenStack we can customize and maintain a strong vendor neutrality, which is the way we prefer to operate. We can scale it across so many nodes, and it’s a perfect fit for the cloud management work we do here.”

VMware might still be a better bet for very large corporations who have the budget for high-end software but lack the IT talent to implement and manage anything complex.

But UBX Cloud has the operator talent to work with OpenStack, and the resulting cost savings and scalability make it a win for both us and our customers.

“Managing private cloud as we do, OpenStack’s parameters and our team’s capabilities have proven to be the best fit for our clients,” Steven says. “And one of the reasons we can remain so affordable for our clients is that we look for opportunities like these and then we work hard to make them succeed for everyone.”