If you’re a technology reseller in today’s uncertain software virtualization market, you and your customers are probably actively exploring options for virtualized environments. Of course, finding the perfect alternative is easier said than done: it needs to be scalable, easy to migrate to, cost efficient, and provide the same technical capabilities as preexisting virtualization solutions. That’s a seemingly tall order – but luckily, there are a range of options.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at the choices that are available to everyone searching for alternatives to mainstream hypervisor, storage, and other cloud services.

The three main options for virtualization

When your potential customers are affected by the events in the virtualization market, they have three main responses they can take:

1. Do nothing (the full-stack solution user)
2. Lessen the risk exposure by exploring alternatives for non-critical workloads (the multi-hypervisor user)
3. A full migration away (the full-on replacement user)

Let’s review these routes in more detail, before exploring the specific options that are available to organizations that choose each of those paths.

1) The full-stack solution user

These are typically organizations that have invested significantly into their current virtualization software solution and who cannot, or do not wish to, move away from their existing virtualization services. 

This comes at the benefit of not having to do anything: No full-scale migration; no new engineering or maintenance; and no juggling a multi-provider model. At worst, this route’s most difficult process would be switching providers of a specific solution, rather than replacing the full stack 

However, as with all times a developer has chosen to “do nothing”; doing nothing is a choice and trade-off itself: with this route, they will still have to consume the potential cost increases, accept drastically different solutions packages or licence agreements, and remain anchored to the vendor. What’s more, this channel runs the risk of being burnt twice by the circumstances that led them to make that choice: because they haven’t changed the fundamental design of their solution, they’ll still face unwanted consequences again if there are further changes to their package, billing, services, or cost.

Generally speaking, this buyer segment will not actively be considering alternatives.

2) The multi-hypervisor user

This category refers to organizations that want to keep their options open and have more virtualization services at their disposal – either to reduce risks or costs. 

This solution is a middle-of-the-road compromise. With this option, organizations are able to keep their deployments in operation and stave off full-scale migrations (which often need the extra time and planning to get right the first time), while exploring and testing the cost-saving alternatives on the broader virtualization marketplace.

Of course, this route still comes with its challenges: while the organization’s systems or services are no longer completely dependent upon a single monolith or service, the majority of their functionality remains anchored to one provider. 

Similar to doing nothing, this means that the organization will still have to face unwanted challenges if there are further changes to the use of the primary service provider. It also carries risks of shortfalls and poor integration in the long term – plus, these organizations will need to consider how they’ll manage security updates, maintenance, and compatibility of their new, multi-solution setup in the years to come. 

Given that these organizations are still at risk of further challenges in licensing, cost, product availability, and so on, this route is often seen as a simple time-buying exercise, allowing the business to remain stable while assessing potential exits. Solutions that give them that stability, but which also hold the promise of easy migrations down the road, seamless technology compatibility, and full feature integration will be of great interest to this segment.

3) The full-on replacement

This third category refers to organizations who react decisively to avoid steep licence fees or renewal costs. In this category, they’re not looking to test alternatives or farm out non-critical infrastructure or services to third parties; they’re looking to jump entirely to a new provider, or even an entirely new model of virtualization. 

The challenges of this third group are clear to see: full-scale migrations are time-consuming and can be expensive, depending on the complexity of the project. In many cases, such a migration would carry risks of downtime, both in customer- or service-facing terms (where systems are down as the data and infrastructure is migrated) and in resource terms (where entire developer teams would be shifted away from normal business or product work). 

However, for many organizations, the costs of a migration would be returned multiple times over, given the existing costs associated with increasing licence fees and billings for traditional virtualization services. What’s more, if they choose open source alternatives, their systems (and services) would be free of vendor lock-in, reducing the likelihood of future large-scale migrations. 

There’s also the growing sophistication and ease of virtualization services to consider. The broad monopoly on virtualization services has largely shrunk away, thanks to the advancements seen in competitors, both in the proprietary space and in open source communities.  Organizations who are exploring this option would generally be looking for technologies that offer a simplified migration process, the same power and ease-of-use of their previous solution, and the reduced costs they enjoyed prior to the market disruption.

So, now that we understand the three main responses that organizations could take when responding to shifts in the virtualization software landscape, let’s explore how you as a channel reseller could respond to these opportunities. 

What are the open source alternatives for organizations of different sizes?

There are several avenues available for organizations who are exploring open source alternatives for virtualization. Let’s explore them based on the size of the company.

Options for medium to large private clouds

OpenStack as a powerful alternative

OpenStack has become an extraordinarily powerful and straightforward tool for deploying private cloud resources. This open source tool has been around for more than 14 years, and in that time it has grown significantly; as of 2025, OpenStack is deployed on 45+ million CPU cores, built by 560+ supporting organizations, a community spanning 180+ countries, and powers 300+ public cloud data centers. 

OpenStack offers a simple deployment and robust backbone for reliable services, making it a great option for channel resellers looking for alternatives. 

Canonical’s version of OpenStack can be combined with other technologies in Canonical’s portfolio to deliver robust cloud infrastructure, including MAAS for bare metal server provisioning, and Kubernetes for container management.   

Canonical OpenStack allows enterprises to take advantage of cloud-based operations, while retaining all the benefits of owning their own computing infrastructure – without hidden licence fees.

Learn more about Canonical OpenStack

Canonical’s infrastructure solutions are compliant with FIPS, DISA-STIG, PCI-DSS, and more, and come with a consistent 12 year security maintenance and support commitment. 

Of course, the most attractive benefit of our open infrastructure solutions is the cost implication: on average, our cloud infrastructure solutions carry an average TCO reduction of around 40%.

In one of our case studies, an organisation was able to save $352,500 a year by migrating to bare metal infrastructure using Canonical’s open-source technologies, representing a reduction of 76% of their cloud costs.

Options for smaller private clouds

While large enterprises can simply rely on their economy of scale to withstand price increases or solution changes, most smaller private cloud partners don’t have the mass recurring revenue to bear such major upsets. Luckily, there are some powerful and exceptionally cost effective routes that these organizations can take to remain competitive and continue their services without extreme disruptions.

Powerful, scalable, and manageable MicroClouds

For small cloud setups, MicroCloud is the ideal option. It’s perfect for running VMs or system containers, on single-rack setups between 3 to 50 nodes, and is extremely lightweight and easy to use. 

It deploys in just minutes through simple terminal commands, produces highly cost-effective and available clusters that benefit from automated security updates and upgrades.

Try MicroCloud for free!

We recently helped a Canadian university, the Université de l’Ontario Français, build a reliable and easily-scalable server infrastructure using MicroCloud. The university is on a path to considerable growth, having grown from just 20 students in 2018 to over 300 students today, with plans to expand to around 2,000 more students in the next 4 to 5 years. MicroCloud gave them simplicity and ease-of-use, perfect for a limited IT team, full backwards compatibility with their existing infrastructure, and powerful scalability to grow for more classrooms, students, and campuses in the coming years. 

Wrapping up

In conclusion, organizations facing uncertainty in the virtualization market have multiple cost-effective and scalable open source options to choose from, including OpenStack for large private clouds and MicroCloud for smaller setups. Canonical’s infrastructure and cloud solutions offer easy deployment, flexibility, long term support, and an easy pathway to compliance – without hidden licence fees or unpredictable pricing changes. If your clients, or potential buyers, are being affected by shifts in the virtualization space, OpenStack and MicroCloud are powerful solutions. 

If you’d like to learn more about our wide range of cloudification and virtualization offerings, please get in contact our team. 

And if you’re interested in being a part of our mission to provide open source solutions to organizations looking for options, you can also apply to become a Canonical partner.

More resources

[White paper] Lift & shift or rebuild: choosing your cloud migration strategy

Canonical empowers Université de l’Ontario Français dream of rapid scaling through MicroCloud and enterprise support

OneUptime takes back its servers and saves $352,500 a year with Canonical infrastructure solutions

How to cloudify your data centre?

[Watch] How to migrate to Ubuntu-based infrastructure