The UK hyperconverged shortlist has narrowed to three: Nutanix, VMware vSAN, and Microsoft Azure Stack HCI (now Azure Local). The Broadcom acquisition of VMware in 2024 reshuffled the market — many UK customers are actively evaluating alternatives, and Nutanix + Azure Stack HCI are the credible destinations. This is the honest UK partner read on which to pick.
View the data behind this chart
| Nutanix | Azure Stack | vSAN | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hypervisor lock-in | None (AHV/ESXi) | Hyper-V | ESXi |
| Cloud bridge | NC2 on AWS/Azure | Native Azure | VMC on AWS |
| Per-node cost | Premium | Mid | Premium (post-Broadcom) |
| UK engineer pool | Strong | Growing | Largest |
| Best for | Multi-cloud | Azure-aligned | Existing VMware |
What changed in 2024-2025
Broadcom acquired VMware in November 2023. Subsequent licensing changes — perpetual licences withdrawn, subscription-only, bundling of Cloud Foundation, sharp price increases for many UK customers — drove a wave of HCI re-evaluations.
Nutanix benefited from this. Many vSAN ReadyNode customers ported to AHV (Nutanix's included KVM-based hypervisor) — eliminating VMware licensing entirely while keeping HCI architecture.
Azure Stack HCI was rebranded to Azure Local in 2025 with broader hardware support + tighter Azure Arc integration. It's now genuinely credible for Microsoft-shop customers.
Nutanix — when to pick it
You're moving off VMware vSAN post-Broadcom and want to eliminate VMware licensing entirely (AHV included; no separate hypervisor licence).
You want a single platform across on-prem + AWS + Azure + GCP (Nutanix Cloud Clusters / NC2).
You value the operational simplicity of Prism Central — broadly recognised as best-in-class HCI management.
See our Nutanix UK partner page + Nutanix appliance catalogue.
VMware vSAN — when to keep / pick it
You have a deep VMware investment (NSX, Aria Operations, vRealize Automation, Tanzu) and the operational + skills cost of moving exceeds the licensing pain.
You're committed to ESXi long-term and accept the new subscription model.
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) gives you a single integrated stack across compute + storage + network + management; this is unmatched if you can absorb the cost.
Microsoft Azure Stack HCI (Azure Local) — when to pick it
You're a Microsoft shop and want one tenant + one bill across on-prem + Azure.
Hyper-V is your existing hypervisor or your team has Microsoft skills.
Azure Arc-managed: same governance, monitoring, security policy across on-prem + Azure VMs.
Hardware partners (Dell AX-770, HPE ProLiant, Lenovo ThinkAgile MX) give you choice without locking you to one OEM.
Total cost — 5-year picture (100 VMs, 2-node start, scale to 8 nodes)
VMware vSAN post-Broadcom: highest 5-year TCO by 20-40% in most cases. The subscription model + VCF bundling drives this.
Nutanix: middle of the pack. Per-CPU-core licensing for NCI Pro / Ultimate + add-ons (NCM, NDB) sized to your workload mix.
Azure Stack HCI: lowest if you're already on Microsoft 365 E5 / Azure spend. The "per physical core per month" model is competitive especially with Azure Hybrid Benefit applied.
Caveat: hardware refresh costs are similar across all three. The licensing delta is the swing factor.
What Servnet does
Servnet is a UK partner of Nutanix, VMware (still) and Microsoft. We sell, deploy and migrate between any of the three — and we're honest that the right answer depends as much on team skills + ops capacity as on platform features.
A typical HCI selection engagement: 1) discovery workshop (existing estate + workload mix + skills audit), 2) sized recommendation across all three with 5-year TCO model, 3) PoV / proof of value (4 weeks), 4) phased deployment + workload migration, 5) legacy three-tier decommission.