Keep the Self-Service Cloud. Change the Hypervisor Underneath.
Broadcom’s licensing changes have put every VMware-based service provider and private cloud team in the same position: re-price, re-platform, or both. The hard part is rarely the hypervisor. It is everything built on top of it — the tenant portal, the service catalog, the quotas, the chargeback, the invoices.
Hybr® is that layer, and it is vendor neutral. Run it over vCenter today. Add Hyper-V, Azure Local, Azure Stack Hub, Azure, AWS or Kubernetes tomorrow. Your customers keep the same portal and the same invoice while the infrastructure beneath them changes.
What actually locks you in
Moving virtual machines is a solved problem with well-understood tools. What keeps teams tied to a stack is the commercial and operational scaffolding around it, and that is almost always proprietary:
- vCloud Director for multi-tenancy and the tenant-facing portal.
- Usage Meter and a spreadsheet for chargeback.
- A custom catalog, custom approvals, and years of scripting nobody wants to rewrite.
- Reseller tiers, currencies and margins that exist only in one system.
Replace the hypervisor and all of that has to be rebuilt. Replace the layer above it with something platform-neutral first, and the hypervisor becomes a decision you can make on cost and merit — this year, or in three years.
Hybr® as your VMware alternative
No vCloud Director required
Hybr® connects directly to vCenter and provides the multi-tenancy, RBAC and self-service provisioning that vCloud Director was doing — without the licence and without the dependency. Tenants get a white-labelled portal, quotas and their own service catalog.
One catalog across every platform you run
The same offer, plan and SKU machinery covers VMware vCenter, Hyper-V, Azure Local, Azure Stack Hub, Azure, AWS, and registered Kubernetes, OpenShift or Rancher clusters. A customer ordering a VM on vCenter and a customer ordering GPU capacity on Kubernetes go through the same catalog and land on the same invoice.
Migrate at your own pace, not the renewal’s
Because the tenant-facing layer is independent of the hypervisor, you can move workload by workload. Add a second platform, publish it in the catalog, migrate the customers that make sense, and leave the rest on vCenter. Nobody sees a portal change and nobody sees an invoice change.
Metering and billing that came first, not last
Hybr® has run Microsoft CSP billing for service providers since 2016. Consumption metering, multi-currency pricing, reseller tiers, credit notes and consolidated invoicing are the core of the product, not a reporting add-on. That is usually the hardest part of any VMware exit to replace.
Where teams typically land
- Stay on vCenter, drop vCloud Director. The fastest cost reduction, and no workload movement at all.
- Add Azure Local alongside vCenter. New workloads land on the cheaper platform; existing ones stay put.
- Add Kubernetes and GPU services. Often the more interesting move — new revenue rather than cost avoidance.
- Full migration over several quarters, with the portal and billing constant throughout.
Frequently asked questions
Does Hybr® migrate our virtual machines?
No. Hybr® is the management, self-service and commercial layer, not a migration tool. It removes the reason most migrations stall — having to rebuild the tenant portal, catalog and billing on the new platform — so you can use whatever migration tooling suits the workload.
Do we have to leave VMware to use Hybr®?
No, and many customers do not. Hybr® works well as a vCloud Director replacement on top of a vCenter estate you intend to keep. Leaving VMware becomes an option rather than a project.
What replaces VMware Usage Meter?
Hybr® meters consumption per tenant across every connected platform and turns it into rated, invoiceable usage — with the pricing, currency and reseller structure applied. It is the same engine used for Microsoft CSP consumption.
Can our resellers keep their own branding and margins?
Yes. White-labelling, reseller tiers, per-tier pricing and multi-currency support apply across all platforms, not just one.
What about identity?
Microsoft Entra ID, enterprise ADFS, and custom SAML or Keycloak identities are supported, so tenant onboarding does not have to be rebuilt either.
Related: Hybr® for VMware vCenter · Azure Local · Kubernetes & GPU-as-a-Service · Cloud FinOps · Hybrid Cloud Management
Price it against your own renewal
The useful comparison is your actual estate and your actual renewal quote. Bring both and we will walk through what Hybr® replaces, what it does not, and what the migration path looks like.