By late 2024, the company’s platform engineering team was managing its Kubernetes clusters across EKS, GKE and AKS with Rancher — but without a support contract. After a sudden 4x price increase, the Rancher agreement had been terminated, leaving the team reliant on partner CDW’s professional services to jump in to keep dozens of production clusters running. The situation created operational risk, and leadership made it a priority to find a secure, supported replacement.
At the same time, the infrastructure team was facing a separate challenge: a sprawling virtual machine estate of more than 50,000 VMs, hosted primarily on VMware. With VMware licensing costs increasing and a complex upgrade cycle looming, the organization had already invested $8 million in new on-prem hardware to support a possible transition, starting with an initial phase of 5,000 VMs. But with internal testing delayed and the hardware sitting idle, time was running out to show ROI and align infrastructure strategy with financial planning.
Rather than tackle these challenges in isolation, the company made a bold decision — to find a single platform that could address both.
The evaluation process began in early December 2024, and within a week, the team was hands-on with Spectro Cloud Palette in a formal proof of concept.
Over the course of seven weeks, they validated multiple capabilities, including:
Kubernetes-as-a-Service (KaaS) for consistent cluster management
Virtual Machine Orchestrator (VMO) for running VMs inside Kubernetes using KubeVirt
MAAS integration for bare-metal provisioning
CSI integration with Hitachi storage arrays
The clusters were deployed to a Netherlands-based data center using new hardware backed by Hitachi storage systems. During the POC, the team encountered — and overcame — real-world challenges such as verifying fiber channel connectivity, resolving LUN provisioning, and navigating outbound proxy constraints. Rather than derail the project, these tests confirmed Palette’s ability to support their environment’s complexity.
By the end of January 2025, the organization signed a three-year deal with Spectro Cloud, facilitated through long-standing partner CDW.
The decision came down to three strategic advantages.
First, bare-metal readiness. With millions already invested in physical infrastructure, the organization needed a solution that could move fast on-prem. Palette’s native integration with MAAS allowed for automated provisioning and lifecycle management of bare-metal clusters — a key differentiator.
Second, unified VM and container operations. Palette’s Virtual Machine Orchestrator offered a clear path to migrate thousands of VMs into Kubernetes clusters using KubeVirt, supporting the company’s long-term goal of reducing VMware reliance while simplifying governance.
Third, operational alignment. With dozens of siloed teams working across clouds, geographies, and platforms, the company needed consistent tooling and automation to streamline operations. Palette’s policy-based model and flexibility across environments helped break down barriers between teams.
The company’s immediate focus is on replacing around 50 legacy clusters and repatriating 90% of its AWS-based workloads over three years — a transition that will see thousands of workloads moved back on-prem. That effort will be supported by Spectro Cloud Palette running across bare metal, VMware, and Nutanix, with centralized governance and automated lifecycle operations.
Longer term, the organization aims to standardize its infrastructure tooling across its global footprint, reduce its dependency on outsourced support, and unify management across containers and virtual machines.
With Spectro Cloud Palette in place, the foundation is set — and the roadmap is in motion.
To learn how Spectro Cloud can help you replace Rancher, reduce VMware footprint, or bring consistency across hybrid environments, explore our solutions for bare metal and VM modernization.
This global software enterprise operates across eight geographic regions and four cloud environments, serving customers worldwide with over 6,000 employees and more than $2 billion in annual revenue.
In early 2025, the company signed a three-year agreement to adopt Spectro Cloud Palette as its enterprise Kubernetes platform. The decision followed a highly successful proof of concept and marked a strategic step toward consolidating container and VM operations across hybrid infrastructure — starting with the replacement of Rancher and laying the foundation for a broader exit from VMware.
Their policy prevents named public references, but the results — and the scale of transformation — are real.
Who: US-based enterprise software company
What: Replacing Rancher with Spectro Cloud Palette for KaaS; planning major VM repatriation with Palette VMO
Why: Urgent need for a supported, scalable K8s platform and long-term VMware alternatives
When: POC began December 2024, three-year contract signed January 2025 through partner CDW
What next: Rebuilding ~50 clusters, replacing initially 5,000+ VMs, repatriating AWS workloads over 3 years