VSHN’s Identity

This page serves as the starting point to understand what VSHN is, why we exist, how we plan to achieve our goals, and what we do and offer to make it happen.

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Why

Our purpose, cause, or belief. WHY do we exist as a company? And WHY should anyone care about our work and offerings? Others might call this our "Vision."

We help the software industry to continually focus on their core business.
— Why VSHN

What this means

We do not attempt to solve every IT problem that organizations might encounter. Instead, we focus on companies that produce and operate their own software or need to operate third-party software as part of their core business. We guide them through these processes and take on operational responsibility for the most critical aspects, enabling software companies—and especially their developers—to focus on value creation ("coding").

How

The HOW is how we think we bring our WHY to life and what makes us and our company unique. Others might call this our "Mission."

We are Technology Leaders in bringing New Solutions into Continuous Operations.
— VSHN's How

What this means

VSHN is recognized as a technology leader and pioneer, always open to exploring new methods and challenging the status quo to seek improvements and adopt better practices. Our drive to innovate and refine our methods is why our customers value us.

  • This philosophy influences what we offer our customers, especially in how we handle technical aspects, collaboration, and self-service.

  • It also shapes our approach to our organizational system and personal interactions, ensuring we do not stick to outdated habits.

We continuously explore new technologies and approaches to build sustainable and reliable solutions, balancing the excitement of innovation with the need for continuous, dependable operations. This balance is our niche and our key challenge. We need innovators who push boundaries and pragmatic implementers who uphold our standards of proactive, high-quality, customer-focused service. We must ensure that our innovations do not negatively impact operations while remaining open to new paths and accepting challenging opportunities with our customers and partners.

What

Every VSHNeer should be able to easily describe the products or services VSHN provides or their job function within the organization. The following describes what VSHN offers and how the business within our HOW works.

Products and Solutions

VSHN is not a single product or business; we operate through three main Business Areas — Custom Solutions (referred to as Solutions) and two product areas (referred to as Products). See VSHN Offerings - Portfolio Overview.

To help developers operate their own or third-party software, we build Products that enable DevOps through self-service. Recognizing that each customer’s needs are unique, we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all Product. Using our Products often requires hands-on system architecture, engineering, and support. Drawing on over a decade of experience in software operations, VSHN uses proven technology stacks, processes, and tools to build complete Solutions around and on top of our Products. The Solutions Business Area bridges the gap between VSHN’s standard offerings and the unique technical business needs of customers and third-party products.

Limited Consulting and Custom Engineering

We believe that managed services and ongoing collaboration are the sustainable way to apply a "you break it, you fix it" mindset. At VSHN, we partner with customers to collaboratively develop and operate services over the long term—rather than delivering one-time implementations or offering ad-hoc support for systems we don’t jointly own.

During the sales process, we may still provide limited-time and limited-scope reviews, consultations, or architectural guidance. In such cases, the (potential) customer pays for the effort and may choose to proceed independently based on the input received. However, VSHN will not assume responsibility for these implementations, nor do we guarantee readiness to support them at a later stage.

General Business Strategy

What is the common logic behind all that we do?

  • Through channels (partners) and platform integrations (like VSHN Managed OpenShift, APPUiO), customers can self-service our Product Offerings, billed as managed services subscriptions. Each service is deployed hundreds or thousands of times but maintained centrally — enabling scalability through automation, standardization, and self-service.

    • Revenue: Generated via recurring fees per running instance.

    • Costs: Primarily the effort of upfront and ongoing product development, as well as continuous operations of existing instances.

  • Through a personal sales process, we assess customer requirements and offer either a suitable VSHN Product with onboarding or a tailored Solution. These Solutions typically combine Products, Solution Building Blocks, engineering, and support.

    • Revenue: From recurring fees and billable hours — the more customized the solution, the more it relies on hourly billing.

    • Costs: Primarily engineering effort, support, and ongoing operations for the aspects of the solution where we provide managed services.

We collaboratively define, build, and operate solutions with our customers and partners. Requirements, priorities, and timelines are decided together with product owners and teams. We do not offer body leasing or assign engineers under client control.

Reuse What We Have

We don’t like to reinvent the wheel. In Solutions, we try to use VSHN Products or third-party offerings first. Only if they don’t fit the customer’s requirements, or are not yet available in the needed quality, feature set, or on the required cloud provider, do we build them as custom, partly managed services to close the gap.

We still try to standardize the things we create for Solutions to increase reusability, but we don’t proactively invest in them as if they were Products.

Values, Organization, and Work Culture

As described in our HOW, VSHN is unique in terms of our organizational structure, view of leadership, transparency, responsibility, and business agility — all based on our Values. Start learning more here: