Why we launched Servala
The Problem: Missing Managed Services
Our vision at VSHN is to help the software industry focus on its core business by supporting developers with platform engineering. After more than a decade in this field, we’ve worked with a vast range of infrastructures and identified a key challenge: while cloud providers and enterprise private clouds excel at delivering compute, storage, and network resources, they often lack the managed services essential for modern software, such as databases, caches, queues, etc.
To bridge this gap, we provide our managed services, ensuring developers can focus on building great software rather than worrying about infrastructure complexities.
The Insight: We’re Not Alone
Over the years, we realized we weren’t the only ones struggling with this issue. Many users of these infrastructures – whether internal IT teams or third-party agencies – also had to bring their own managed services, creating unnecessary duplication of effort. This wastes time and resources and distracts software companies from delivering value to their users.
Between 2018 and 2020, this became increasingly clear: What if cloud providers could natively offer these managed services instead of forcing customers to build their own solutions? Hyperscalers like AWS and Azure already provide these capabilities, but small and mid-sized cloud providers typically lack the resources to offer a complete managed services catalog.
The Opportunity: Empower Cloud Providers
In 2020, we took a significant step forward by developing a way to instantiate a managed service directly within a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster for one of our customers. This has been in production since early 2021. This allowed developers to access fully managed and compliant services, like databases, without needing to file a ticket request. We expanded our catalog over the next two years, creating a robust self-service solution developers love.
By early 2023, we asked ourselves: Why not directly bring this catalog of valuable managed services to cloud providers, enhancing their infrastructure offerings? That question led to Servala – The Open Cloud Native Service Hub, formerly the “VSHN Application Marketplace”.
With Servala, our goal is to equip cloud providers with the managed services they need to compete with hyperscalers while allowing them to maintain their focus on delivering high-quality infrastructure services.
For Cloud Providers: If you’re offering compute and storage, let’s talk!
Introducing Servala
As we developed Servala throughout 2024 and into 2025, we discovered another critical need: many software vendors want to offer their software as a SaaS but struggle with the operational challenges. Transitioning to a SaaS model requires handling:
- Preparing the software for SaaS deployment and packaging it for self-service availability
- Managing day-2 operations like security, compliance, monitoring, alerting, scaling, maintenance, backup, and 24/7 support
Since running software is at the heart of what we do, we decided to extend Servala to help software vendors seamlessly transition into SaaS providers. By onboarding applications into Servala, software vendors gain instant access to cloud providers and private enterprise clouds, opening up new sales channels without the operational burden.
For Software Vendors: Want to turn your software into a SaaS offering? We can help!
Learn more in our “Intro to Servala” Webinar Recording
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What’s Next?
In 2025, we will focus on enabling software vendors to onboard themselves onto the Servala service delivery platform. This presents exciting technical challenges, which we’ll explore in an upcoming article.
Find more information about Servala in our Servala launch announcement.
Contact us
Interested in learning more? Book a meeting or write us to explore how Servala can help you! Experience the future of cloud native services on servala.com. 🚀
Markus Speth
Marketing, People, Strategy
