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.
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 Subsequent licensing changes — perpetual licences withdrawn, subscription-only, bundling of Cloud Foundation, sharp price increases for many UK customers — drove a wave of HCI re-evaluations.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 an authorised 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.