Our Story

Founded in 2014, VSHN – The DevOps Company has grown to become Switzerland’s leading Managed Service Provider, specializing in Cloud Native solutions and Kubernetes.

2014

• VSHN is founded with the goal of revolutionizing the hosting market.
• The company starts as a lean startup, focusing on operating IT platforms through automation, agility, and continuous improvement – without owning server/data center infrastructure.

2015

• Start of the VSHN blog.

2016

• Creation of the APPUiO brand together with Puzzle ITC, marking VSHN’s entry into container and Kubernetes technologies.
• Amazee Group launches Managed Drupal Hosting amazee.io with VSHN as operating partner.

2017

• VSHN gets ISO 27001 certified.
• APPUiO (Managed OpenShift) on Exoscale.
• VSHN has risen from 551st place (2016) to 513th place (2017) in Computerworld.ch’s ranking of the strongest ICT companies in Switzerland.

2018

• Highly interesting new projects such as the Linked Data Platform of the Swiss Confederation and the GovCMS platform of the Australian Ministry of Finance.
• Reaches the top 10 of the fastest-growing ICT companies in Switzerland by percentage.
• VSHN is recognized as Rising Star Switzerland 2019 in the ISG Provider Lens.
• VSHN becomes official hosting partner of Spryker Systems.
• Participation in the Powercoders program: Refugees for the IT industry.
• VSHN becomes a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) member.
• VSHN introduces four weeks of paternity leave.

2019

• VSHN wins Gold at the Swiss Digital Economy Award in the category of Highest Digital Quality.
• VSHN becomes the first Swiss Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP).
• VSHN becomes a Red Hat Advanced CCSP Partner.
• VSHN sponsers Hack’n’Lead – the first Swiss hackathon for women.
• Exciting new projects with e.g., acrevis Bank und neon.
• Introduction of Project Syn, our tool set for provisioning, updates, backup, monitoring, and response/alerting of applications in production on Kubernetes and in the cloud.
• Participation and sponsorship of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2019 in Barcelona.
• Demonstrating lived transparency by publishing our VSHN handbook.
• VSHN celebrates its 5th birthday. 🎂
• Vancouver, Canada, office trial run in addition to the Zurich, Switzerland headquarters.

2020

• Introduction of Sociocracy 3.0 practices, to positively develop our organization further.
• Receives the Swiss Hosting Quality Label.
• Project Syn is nominated for the DINAcon Award 2020.
• ISAE 3402 audit in addition to our ISO 27001 certification.
• VSHN partners with GitLab.
• VSHN launches the first DevOps in Switzerland Study with the result DevOps Report 2020.

2021

• VSHN announces Kubernetes First strategy.
• VSHN wins the OCRE – European Open Science Cloud tender.
• Partnership with Isovalent (Cisco), the company behind Cilium.
• VSHN releases K8up, our Kubernetes backup operator, and K8up becomes a CNCF sandbox project.
• APPUiO turns 5 and we celebrate with a new video.
• First VSHN HackDay.
• VSHN is in the Top Ten Open Source Contributors in Switzerland.
• VSHN introduces additional vacation days for each year of service.

2022

• Recognized as a Kununu Top Company 2022.
• VSHN introduces AppOps, AppFlow and AppCat.
• Introduction of our Kubernetes First Strategy.
• Launch of APPUiO Cloud as Namespace-as-a-Service based on Red Hat OpenShift 4.
• Announcing AppCat on APPUiO Cloud.
• Move into new office space in the VSHNtower.
• VSHN becomes the first Red Hat Premier CCSP Partner in Switzerland.
• VSHN expands internationally: opening our office in Vancouver, Canada.

2023

• Launch of the VSHN Application Marketplace, shaping the company’s product portfolio for the future.
• VSHN climbs 14 positions in the Computerworld 500 ranking in 2023!
• Collaboration between Gepardec, VSHN, and Exoscale.
• A New Step on our Long Relationship with the CNCF.
• APPUiO Cloud Self-Signup.

2024

• Partnership with IONOS leads to winning the Cloud Ecosystem Award at the Red Hat Summit: Connect Germany 2024.
• VSHN becomes first Crossplane partner in Europe.
• VSHN Acquires APPUiO from Puzzle ITC and develops it further as an Expert Hosting Solution.
• VSHN is in the Top 10 Managed Cloud Platforms in the Swiss Digital Ranking.
• A New Era at VSHN: Redefining Leadership in Self-Organization Without a Management Team.
• Celebration of VSHN’s 10-year anniversary.

2025

• Exciting new projects with our partners Health Info Net AG (HIN) and Gesundheitsamt (Health Department) of Frankfurt, watch our joint presenation at Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025.
• 2’773* members in our Cloud Native Computing Switzerland Meetup group.
• 2’299* followers on LinkedIn.
• 1’323* blog posts.
• 390* subscribers on YouTube (vshn.tv).
• 255* repositories on GitHub.
• Further development of the VSHN Application Marketplace, unlocking the Power of Cloud Native Applications by uniting Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and enterprises on one platform, offering fully managed, sovereign cloud services.

* (data from February 2025)

Throughout its history, VSHN has consistently focused on open source and cloud-native technologies, positioning itself at the forefront of innovation in DevOps and container orchestration. The company has grown from a startup to a recognized leader in Switzerland’s DevOps landscape, continuously expanding its services and partnerships to meet the evolving needs of software developers and IT operations.