SDcloud operates with a structural advantage that no commercial vendor can replicate: we have no proprietary platform, no OEM agreement, and no financial interest in any specific technology. Our only revenue comes from building infrastructure that actually serves you — not our sales quota.
Any company can claim to be "vendor neutral." The claim is meaningless unless backed by structural independence — no revenue tied to a specific product, no partnership agreements that create financial bias.
Red Hat earns revenue when you run RHEL. Canonical earns revenue when you run Ubuntu Pro. VMware earns revenue when you run vSphere. These companies employ brilliant engineers — but their commercial incentives are structurally misaligned with your sovereignty.
SDcloud holds no commercial agreements with any software vendor. We earn revenue only from our clients — from the design, deployment, and support of infrastructure built to serve their requirements. When we recommend OpenStack over another platform, or Cilium over Calico, or Ceph over a proprietary SAN, it is because of engineering merit and fit — not because someone pays us a referral fee.
No revenue from recommending or selling any commercial product
No AWS Partner Network, no Google Cloud Partner, no Microsoft Partner status
No SDcloud-branded cloud management layer, no licenced software stack
This is not a criticism of commercial vendors — they build excellent products. It is an observation about structural incentives.
| Aspect | Red Hat / IBM | Ubuntu / Canonical | VMware / Broadcom | SDcloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue model | RHEL subscriptions | Ubuntu Pro + Juju | vSphere licences | Client engagements only |
| Proprietary product | RHEL (proprietary patches) | Ubuntu Pro / Landscape | vSphere / vCenter | None |
| Upstream open-source | Fork (restricted access 2023) | Mostly upstream | Proprietary | 100% upstream |
| Incentive to recommend competitor | None | None | None | Full — we pick best tool |
| Knowledge transfer goal | Support subscription renewal | Support subscription renewal | Licence renewal | Your internal capability |
| CLOUD Act exposure | Yes (IBM US) | Partial (UK entity) | Yes (Broadcom US) | No (NL + UAE entities) |
Principles that are non-negotiable in how we design and operate infrastructure.
Every architecture we build starts with the question: "How does the client leave if they need to?" We design for maximum portability from day one.
Undocumented infrastructure creates dependency. Every deployment includes runbooks, architecture decision records, and operational playbooks.
The goal of every engagement is to increase your team's operational capability. We do not build dependency on SDcloud.
We use upstream open-source releases — not commercial forks with proprietary layers. OpenStack, Kubernetes, Ceph, and Cilium as published by their communities.
Every architecture decision has trade-offs. We present them clearly — including trade-offs that might lead you to choose a solution we cannot directly support.
Security is never traded for convenience or speed. We will slow a project timeline before delivering an architecture with unaddressed security gaps.
SDcloud was built from over 25 years of infrastructure engineering experience — starting before virtualisation, before "cloud" was a product category, and before open-source was considered enterprise-grade.
Our founders worked through the full arc of enterprise IT: bare-metal UNIX administration, the shift to x86 servers, the rise of VMware, the emergence of Linux as a serious enterprise platform, and the birth of OpenStack in 2010. We deployed our first private OpenStack cluster in 2012.
SDcloud FZ-LLC is incorporated in the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone (RAKEZ), United Arab Emirates, with a Netherlands entity serving European clients.
UNIX system administration, network engineering, and data centre operations across financial services and telecoms.
Large-scale VMware ESX deployments, data centre consolidation, storage area networking, and early Linux enterprise adoption.
Engaged with OpenStack from the Austin and Bexar releases. Deployed early private cloud for clients needing an alternative to VMware vCloud.
Multi-region Ceph storage, early container orchestration, SDN/NFV deployments, and government sector expansion into Gulf markets.
Production-grade Kubernetes at scale, Cilium eBPF adoption, GitOps pipelines, and multi-cluster federation.
GPU cluster deployments for LLM inference, open-weight model deployment, and sovereign AI platforms for government.
Netherlands · European Union
Our EU entity serves European public sector, government, and regulated industry clients under Dutch commercial law. GDPR-compliant operations, NIS2-aligned architecture, and data residency guarantees within EU borders.
United Arab Emirates
SDcloud FZ-LLC is incorporated in the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone (RAKEZ). 100% foreign ownership, full profit repatriation, and zero corporate tax. Strategically positioned to serve GCC government ministries and South Asian enterprise clients.
When you contact SDcloud, you speak directly with infrastructure engineers who have deployed the technology you're asking about. No pre-sales gatekeeping.