VSHN Year in Review 2025
As we approach the end of the year, we would like to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you to our customers, partners, community members, and the entire VSHN team for the trust, collaboration, and shared learning throughout 2025. We wish you happy holidays, a restful end of the year, and a great start into 2026. We are looking forward to continuing this journey together.
Building sovereign, reliable cloud native platforms together
2025 was a year of momentum, focus, and collaboration for VSHN. Together with our customers, partners, and the wider cloud native community, we continued to do what we care about most: operating Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms reliably, delivering managed cloud native services from our Application Catalog, enabling developer productivity, and pushing forward open, sovereign digital infrastructure in Switzerland and Europe.
This year showed once again that reliable operations are not just a technical challenge, but a foundation for innovation, security, and trust. Digital sovereignty became one of the defining topics of the year – so much so that terms like “Sovereignty Washing” started to appear. This underlines how important it is to distinguish real architectural and operational sovereignty from marketing claims. If you want to dive deeper into this topic, we recommend Taking Back Control: The Case for Data Sovereignty and European Cloud Alternatives Matter.
Platform operations at scale
Throughout 2025, we operated and evolved a growing number of Kubernetes and OpenShift platforms for customers from the public sector, healthcare, finance, and many other industries. We were particularly happy to welcome new customers such as Gesundheitsamt Frankfurt and HIN (Health Info Net), and to showcase these successful collaborations in our customer success stories.
The focus across all platforms was clear: stability, security, and predictable operations in increasingly complex environments. What we see every day in practice is simple but essential: platforms need to be understandable, maintainable, and future-proof in order to scale sustainably.
If you want to build a solid foundation or refresh your understanding, What is Kubernetes? The Engine of the Digital World, Simply Explained remains one of our most-read pieces of the year.
Servala – from idea to ecosystem
One of the biggest milestones of 2025 was the continued growth of Servala – the Sovereign App Store. What started as a vision for an open, interoperable marketplace for cloud native services became a tangible and growing ecosystem this year.
A key moment was the Servala Ecosystem Day 2025 – Sovereignty in Action, where cloud providers, software vendors, and consulting partners came together to co-create and openly discuss what digital sovereignty means beyond buzzwords.
The accompanying recap blog post and video captured this shift from concept to collaboration and became one of the strongest Servala-related pieces of the year:
Throughout 2025, Servala also featured prominently in multiple talks, workshops, and partner discussions, reinforcing the idea that sovereignty is built through openness, standards, and shared responsibility – not isolation.
Community, events, and knowledge sharing
Community has always been at the heart of VSHN, and 2025 was no exception. We were present at numerous events across Switzerland and Europe – not just as sponsors, but as active contributors and participants.
Some highlights from the year included:
- Kubernetes Community Days Suisse Romande 2025 at CERN
- Red Hat Summit: Connect Zurich 2025 (and upcoming: the 2026 edition in January)
- KubeCon & CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 in London (and of course again 2026 in Amsterdam in March)
- DINAcon 2025: Sovereignty Needs Collaboration, Courage, and Real Openness
- VSHN at Red Hat Summit: Connect Darmstadt
- Learn more about PostgreSQL with core team member Bruce Momjian
- VSHN at Smart Country Convention 2025 in Berlin
- Kickoff Event of the SDS Network in Bern
- Swiss Software Festival 2025 – A Celebration of Software, Community, and Innovation
- Cloud Native Zürich 2025
- DevOps Meetup at Zühlke and the launch of our DevOps in Switzerland Report 2025
- UphillConf 2025
- DevOpsDays Zurich 2025
And last but not least: our Cloud Native Computing Meetups in Switzerland with now over 3’000 members!
Our upcoming events can be found here.
On the content side, we continued to publish blog posts, partner spotlights, and event recaps that connect theory with practice – always grounded in real operational experience and we have launched our DevOps in Switzerland Report 2025.
Strengthening partnerships
Strong ecosystems need strong partnerships. In 2025, we further deepened our collaboration with technology partners, cloud providers, and the open source community.
Our role as a long-standing Red Hat partner, our engagement in the CNCF ecosystem – including our own CNCF Sandbox project K8up – Kubernetes Backup Operator, Codey or Project Syn – and our close collaboration with Swiss and European cloud providers all contributed to delivering reliable, compliant, and sovereign platforms for our customers.
Partner spotlights and joint appearances at events underlined a shared belief: sustainable cloud native platforms are built together.
Growing as a team
Behind every reliable platform is a motivated team. In 2025, VSHN continued to grow – not just in numbers, but in experience and diversity of skills.
We invested in learning, internal knowledge sharing, and self-organisation, while also experimenting with new formats to make people and roles more visible. Stay tuned to learn more about our VSHNeers in 2026.
The combination of ownership, trust, and technical excellence once again proved to be a strong foundation.
Growing as an organization
2025 was also a year of growth and learning for VSHN as an organization. Beyond technical excellence, we continued to evolve how we collaborate, make decisions, and take ownership. We refined internal structures, clarified responsibilities, and invested in transparency and communication across teams.
One important milestone was the introduction of a new salary system, which we have been working on intensively for quite some time. The new model will take effect in 2026, once everything is ready. We will definitely share our experience, learnings, and outcomes in a separate blog post.
This ongoing organisational development enables us to scale without losing what defines VSHN: trust, self-organisation, and a strong sense of shared responsibility.
Looking ahead
2025 reinforced our belief that the future of cloud native platforms is open, interoperable, and sovereign. The challenges are real – from increasing regulation to growing technical complexity – but so are the opportunities.
With strong platforms, a growing ecosystem around Servala, and an engaged community, we are entering the next year with confidence.
Thank you to all our customers, partners, community members, and VSHNeers for being part of this journey. We are looking forward to what comes next.
Follow us
If you like what we’re doing, follow us and subscribe to our newsletters.
Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People