Platform9

Platform9 (Platform9 Systems, Inc.) develops software for running private clouds on enterprises' existing server and storage infrastructure. Its flagship product, Private Cloud Director, provides virtual machine management with capabilities positioned as drop-in replacements for core VMware functions, including high availability, live migration (described as a vMotion equivalent), and dynamic resource rebalancing (DRS-like behavior), together with self-service provisioning, REST APIs, multi-tenancy, SSO, and built-in Kubernetes so that VMs and containers are managed from a single control plane. An open-source-derived migration tool, vJailbreak, automates movement of workloads from VMware environments and, as of the August 2025 release, can convert entire vSphere clusters in place and support migration without additional "swing capacity" hardware.

Historically the company positioned itself as an "open-source-as-a-service" and later "open distributed cloud" vendor, delivering OpenStack, Kubernetes and the Fission serverless framework as SaaS-managed services, with a management plane used to remotely install, operate and maintain clusters across public cloud, on-premises and edge locations. Capabilities cited include automated security patching, on-demand upgrades, self-healing clusters, multiversion support and audit logging. Product additions include Platform9 OS, announced in May 2026, a turnkey KVM-ready Linux distribution shipped with Private Cloud Director intended to remove the Linux systems administration burden for VMware administrators.

The platform integrates with third-party enterprise infrastructure: storage from NetApp, Pure Storage and Dell/EMC (with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS and local disk backends); x86 servers from Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo and SuperMicro; backup and DR products from Commvault, Cohesity/Veritas, Rubrik and Veeam; observability tools including Datadog, New Relic, Splunk, Dynatrace, Prometheus and Grafana; and Omnissa Horizon VDI.

Founding story

Platform9 was founded in 2013 by Sirish Raghuram, Madhura Maskasky, Bich Le and Roopak Parikh, a team of early VMware engineers who had previously worked together on virtualization products. Their thesis was that open source ecosystems would supply a broad range of cloud technologies but that enterprises needed a simpler way to operationalize them; they studied Apache CloudStack, OpenStack, LXD and Kubernetes and sought to deliver public-cloud-like agility without confining enterprises to a walled garden.

Business model

Platform9 sells its private cloud software as a SaaS-managed offering with subscription licensing and day-2 support, supplemented by professional services around VMware migration. It also runs partner motions: a technology partner program offering joint integration validation, co-marketing and placement in sales and technical documentation, and the Platform9 Cloud Solution Provider Program (PCSP) for service providers, which carries a stated $1,000/month platform fee with unlimited cores for 90 days and free VMware migration tooling.

Subscription/SaaS revenue from managed private cloud and Kubernetes products; company disclosures have referenced ARR, total contract value and net revenue retention as key metrics. Service-provider pricing is per-region with a $1,000/month platform fee and a 90-day unlimited-core period.

Traction

In 2017 the company reported 60+ enterprise customers, 200+ enterprise clouds managed, 360% customer base growth, 300% revenue growth and 125% net revenue retention. For fiscal 2020 it reported 145% ARR growth, 340% customer base increase, 363% TCV growth, 114% net revenue retention, an NPS of 71 and a 99% customer satisfaction score. In 2022 it reported over 60 enterprise customers, 120 employees, 40,000 nodes powered across private, public and edge clouds, 100% business growth from 2021 to 2022 and 132% net revenue retention. In 2025 it disclosed a Fortune 500 migration of more than 40,000 VMs across 3,000 hypervisors at roughly 200 VMs per day and $35 per VM.

Latest developments

July 2026: named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Private and Hybrid Cloud Management with Automation 2026. June 2026: launched the Platform9 Cloud Solution Provider Program for providers affected by the VCSP sunset in March 2027. May 2026: announced Platform9 OS, a KVM-ready Linux distribution shipped with Private Cloud Director. April 2026: reported its global channel partner program doubled in two quarters. March 2026: Tintri highlighted integrated stack collaboration with Platform9. August 2025: released a Private Cloud Director update with AI hardware support and vJailbreak in-place cluster conversion plus a swing-capacity workaround.