Platform9
Platform9 provides SaaS-managed Private Cloud Director as a VMware alternative for enterprises and service providers, offering VM and Kubernetes management on existing hardware with integrated migration tooling, 50+ technology integrations, and channel-led GTM targeting the post-Broadcom VMware migration window.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2013
- HeadquartersSan Jose, United States
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Platform9 does
Platform9, founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Jose, California, builds SaaS-managed private cloud infrastructure for enterprises and service providers. Its core product, Private Cloud Director, is an enterprise-grade virtualization and container management platform built on the open-source KVM hypervisor and OpenStack foundations, providing VMware-equivalent capabilities — VM high availability, live migration, Dynamic Resource Rebalancing (DRR, the company's VMware DRS analog), distributed virtual switching, and software-defined networking — alongside integrated Kubernetes orchestration under a unified control plane (the hosted Kaapi service). Proprietary tooling includes vJailbreak (an open-source VMware migration automation tool with change-block-tracking for live migrations), Arlon (Cluster API + ArgoCD-based Kubernetes lifecycle management), and Always-On Assurance (managed 24/7 operations and zero-disruption upgrades). The platform supports 50+ technology integrations across storage (NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, HPE, Tintri), backup (Commvault, Veeam, Cohesity, Veritas, Trilio, Storware), monitoring (Datadog, New Relic), and ITSM (ServiceNow).
The company generates revenue through annual enterprise SaaS subscriptions (quote-based pricing) for Private Cloud Director, plus managed Kubernetes plans (Freedom, Growth, Enterprise tiers) and a dedicated Cloud Solution Provider Partner Program (PCSP) priced at $1,000/month with 90-day unlimited-core pricing for migrating service providers. Go-to-market combines direct enterprise field sales targeting VMware customers, a global channel partner program with resellers, SIs, and MSPs, and product-led growth via the free Community Edition and vJailbreak tools as top-of-funnel acquisition. The company reports named enterprise customers across networking (Juniper Networks), data/AI (Cloudera, SambaNova), publishing (EBSCO), telecom (Mavenir), financial services (Asia Commercial Bank, The General Insurance), travel (AeroMexico), and managed services (Rackspace Technology, Meriplex), with anchor deployments of up to 50,000 VMs at single customers.
The business is anchored on the post-Broadcom VMware disruption: Platform9 targets both enterprises seeking VMware alternatives and the service provider channel losing its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) route to market before the March 2027 wind-down. Strategic partnerships (Rackspace, Tintri, Commvault, Fairwinds) and a 2022 $26 million financing round led by Celesta Capital support expansion into AI-ready infrastructure, EMEA markets (UK, Germany, Benelux), and channel-led growth. The company has raised approximately $100 million cumulatively across equity rounds from 2014 to 2022, is privately held with 101-250 employees, and operates under founder leadership with Bhaskar Gorti as CEO and Sirish Raghuram and Roopak Parikh as co-founders.
Platform9 firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Platform9
- Legal name
- Platform9 Systems, Inc.
- Website
- https://platform9.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2013
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Short description
- Platform9 provides SaaS-managed Private Cloud Director as a VMware alternative for enterprises and service providers, offering VM and Kubernetes management on existing hardware with integrated migration tooling, 50+ technology integrations, and channel-led GTM targeting the post-Broadcom VMware migration window.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Platform9 industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Cloud Infrastructure Management
- NAICS
- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821), Computer Systems Design and Related Services (5415)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Private Cloud Platforms (On‑Prem Cloud Stacks) (HDABABAA)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Orchestration (Private-Cloud-Centric) (HDABABAE), Private Cloud Observability, Performance & Capacity Management (HDABABAL), Service Catalog, ITSM & Self-Service Provisioning for Private Cloud (HDABABAH)
Keywords
Where Platform9 is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Jose
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Platform9 business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations
Revenue model
- SaaS Subscription - Private Cloud Director: Platform9 Private Cloud Director is delivered as a SaaS-managed service with subscription-based pricing. The company provides the control plane (Kaapi) as a hosted service while customers run workloads on their own infrastructure, reducing operational complexity and hardware costs. The SaaS model includes automatic updates, security patches, and 24/7 Always-On Assurance support.
- Managed Kubernetes Plans: Managed Kubernetes plans (Freedom, Growth, Enterprise) delivered as SaaS subscriptions. Collects service usage data to provide and improve the service, offer support, and contact customers about upgrades and additional services.
- Platform Services for Service Providers (PCSP): Cloud Solution Provider Partner Program with $1,000/month platform fee plus unlimited cores for 90 days, targeting VMware VCSP migrants. Generates recurring platform subscription revenue from managed service providers.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Monthly | PCSP Partner Program - $1,000/month platform fee with 90-day unlimited-core pricing |
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Community Edition - Free tier |
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | vJailbreak - Free migration tool |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise SaaS Subscription (Private Cloud Director) |
Go-to-market motion5 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels7 records
Platform9 product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Platform9 delivers Private Cloud Director, a SaaS-managed enterprise private cloud platform that serves as a VMware alternative, providing VM high availability, live migration, dynamic resource rebalancing, software-defined networking, multi-tenancy, and integrated Kubernetes orchestration from a unified hosted control plane. The company monetizes the platform via annual SaaS subscriptions bundled with 24/7 Always-On Assurance support, and offers free migration tooling (vJailbreak) plus a free Community Edition to accelerate customer onboarding.
Product overview
Platform9 is a private cloud platform company offering a unified solution for enterprise VM and container management. The core product is Private Cloud Director, which serves as a VMware alternative built on open-source KVM hypervisor. The product portfolio includes migration tooling (vJailbreak) for VMware migrations, a free Community Edition for evaluation, the Elastic Machine Pool for Kubernetes cost optimization, and Arlon for Kubernetes cluster lifecycle management. Together, these products enable enterprises to migrate from VMware while managing both traditional virtualized workloads and modern containerized applications from a single control plane.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Private Cloud Director: Enterprise-grade VM and container management platform that serves as a VMware alternative, providing high availability, live migration, and dynamic resource balancing capabilities.
- Community Edition
- vJailbreak
- Always-On Assurance
- Private Cloud Director Community Edition
Products and services
- Private Cloud Director Enterprise-grade virtualization and container management platform that serves as a VMware alternative. Built on KVM hypervisor, it provides VM high availability, live migration, dynamic resource rebalancing, multi-tenancy, and integrated Kubernetes support for managing both virtual machines and containers from a unified control plane. Delivered as a SaaS-managed service with a hosted control plane (Kaapi) and Always-On Assurance support.
- vJailbreak Free open-source VMware migration tool that automates migration of VMs and applications from VMware environments to Private Cloud Director. Supports both cold and warm migrations, ports storage and network configurations, retains IP addresses, and offers live migration using change-block-tracking. Available for free to all users.
- Private Cloud Director Community Edition Free, full-featured, community-supported edition of Private Cloud Director for smaller deployments, evaluation purposes, and developer adoption. Serves as a top-of-funnel product-led growth offering for the SaaS Private Cloud Director subscription.
- Elastic Machine Pool Solution that helps enterprises reduce public cloud costs related to Kubernetes operations by reclaiming unused capacity. Partnered with Fairwinds for optimization of AWS EKS environments, capable of reducing waste by up to 50%.
- Arlon Open-source Kubernetes native tool for complete end-to-end cluster configuration and lifecycle management, security policy, and application deployment using a declarative approach. Built on Cluster API and ArgoCD.
Quantifiable outcome
- 4x cost savings vs. public cloud for private cloud workloads
- +8 more outcomes
Companies that use Platform9
Customer profileNamed customers13 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Platform9 technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration19 records
Feature9 records
Platform9 partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Six partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- TintricoreTintri partnered with Platform9 to bring hyperconverged infrastructure solutions to market. Tintri's AI-driven adaptive data placement and auto-tiering capabilities are integrated with Platform9's private cloud management to improve efficiency and reduce costs for AI workloads and x86 environments.
- TintricoreTintri and Platform9 announced a strategic partnership on March 25, 2026 to launch a bundled AI-ready infrastructure solution for enterprises combining data center and edge AI components. The joint platform integrates Tintri's VMstore technology with Platform9's Private Cloud Director to unify AI workloads under a single management system, addressing bottlenecks in real-time data processing and reducing per-AI-transaction costs. Available through Tintri's global network of authorized partners.
- CommvaultcoreCommvault partnership extended to include joint cyber resilience offerings. Platform9 is listed alongside Kyndryl and BeyondTrust as Commvault's partner ecosystem extending reach into private cloud, Kubernetes, and privileged access management.
- CommvaultcoreCommvault integrated its data protection capabilities—including VM backup, Kubernetes container protection, and disaster recovery—into Platform9's Private Cloud Director offering. The partnership supports joint customers migrating to Platform9's private cloud infrastructure while maintaining data protection coverage. Commvault promoted Alan Atkinson to Chief Business Development Officer to lead partner ecosystem expansion.
- FairwindscorePlatform9 and Fairwinds partnered to help enterprises reduce public cloud costs related to Kubernetes operations, particularly in AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). The Elastic Machine Pool solution aims to reclaim unused capacity and enable organizations to optimize Kubernetes environments, reducing waste by up to 50%.
- Rackspace TechnologycoreRackspace Technology made a strategic investment in Platform9 and launched Rackspace Managed Platform for Kubernetes (MPK), a joint product combining Platform9's managed Kubernetes capabilities with Rackspace's managed services. The collaboration targets multicloud and distributed cloud management through joint product development and support services. Rackspace Technology is both an investor and a strategic technology partner.
Scale indicators8 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Platform9 competitors and assessment
Company assessmentEmerging players
- Diamanti: Diamanti provides a Kubernetes-native data plane for containers and VMs, an emerging player in the unified VM/container management space where Platform9 also operates.
Direct peers
- Canonical (Charmed OpenStack / MicroCloud): Canonical provides enterprise OpenStack (Charmed OpenStack) and MicroCloud solutions built on KVM, directly competing with Platform9 in the open-source private cloud space.
- Scale Computing: Scale Computing delivers hyperconverged infrastructure with built-in virtualization targeted at edge and SME VMware-replacement scenarios, overlapping with Platform9's lower-end deployments.
- Nutanix: Nutanix provides a hyperconverged infrastructure platform with built-in virtualization and Kubernetes that directly competes with Platform9's Private Cloud Director for VMware-replacement workloads in the enterprise.
- Mirantis: Mirantis offers an OpenStack-based private cloud and Kubernetes platform with similar positioning to Platform9, including a SaaS-managed control plane and VMware migration focus.
- Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization: Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization delivers KVM-based VM management alongside Kubernetes on OpenShift, competing head-to-head with Platform9 for enterprises seeking unified VM and container infrastructure.
- SUSE Virtualization (Harvester): SUSE's Harvester-based virtualization offering provides HCI on Kubernetes with KVM that targets the same VMware-replacement use cases as Platform9, with strong enterprise Linux heritage.
Broad incumbents
- HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise): HPE offers private cloud solutions including HPE Private Cloud and HPE Ezmeral, integrated with its server and storage lines — a broad incumbent competing for the same enterprise infrastructure wallet.
- Microsoft (Hyper-V / Azure Local): Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI) provide hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid cloud extensions that compete with Platform9 in the enterprise private cloud market.
- VMware (Broadcom): VMware vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation are the dominant incumbent virtualization platforms that Platform9 positions against, and whose installed base is the primary displacement target.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Platform9 social profiles
Digital presencePlatform9 compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance1 record
Platform9 financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Platform9 leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles11 records
Platform9 funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds8 records
Investors12 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Platform9 M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Platform9
What does Platform9 do?
Platform9 delivers Private Cloud Director, a SaaS-managed enterprise private cloud platform that serves as a VMware alternative, providing VM high availability, live migration, dynamic resource rebalancing, software-defined networking, multi-tenancy, and integrated Kubernetes orchestration from a unified hosted control plane. The company monetizes the platform via annual SaaS subscriptions bundled with 24/7 Always-On Assurance support, and offers free migration tooling (vJailbreak) plus a free Community Edition to accelerate customer onboarding.
Is Platform9 a public or private company?
Platform9 is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Platform9 founded?
Platform9 was founded in 2013. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is Platform9 based?
Platform9 is headquartered in San Jose, United States, in the North America region.
How does Platform9 make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. SaaS Subscription - Private Cloud Director is the primary driver. The others are managed Kubernetes Plans and platform Services for Service Providers (PCSP).
Who are Platform9's main competitors?
Diamanti is listed as an emerging player. Direct peers are Canonical (Charmed OpenStack / MicroCloud), Scale Computing, Nutanix, Mirantis, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and SUSE Virtualization (Harvester). Broad incumbents are HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Microsoft (Hyper-V / Azure Local) and VMware (Broadcom).
Does Platform9 have an API?
Yes. Platform9 provides API documentation for Private Cloud Director. The API enables developers to automate private cloud operations, manage virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes clusters programmatically. Developer documentation is at docs.platform9.com/api-docs.
What industry is Platform9 in?
Platform9's product category is Cloud Infrastructure Management. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDABABAA, Private Cloud Platforms (On‑Prem Cloud Stacks), with a secondary code of HDABABAE, Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Orchestration (Private-Cloud-Centric). Its NAICS code is 51821 and its SIC code is 7372.