This article is written by Solutions Architect at CDLAN, Marco Ziglioli. 

When CDLAN decided to evolve its cloud platform, our goal was clear: build an environment that combines flexibility, deep visibility, and control. We needed to ensure every workload could run within a trusted, transparent framework. For us, operating Tier IV–grade data centers in Milan and Rome, this meant one thing above all: sovereignty. We required a platform that could fully leverage our infrastructure while maintaining complete jurisdiction over data and operations. Apache CloudStack provided the ideal foundation to make this vision real.

Why and how we chose CloudStack

As stated, our primary need was the creation of a truly sovereign cloud that guarantees our customers full transparency into the true location of their data, but also designed and built to grant resilience in the same site and across different geographical areas. 

Several key features drove our decision:

• Sovereignty and Compliance: CloudStack’s multi-zone architecture was a primary driver. It allows us to distribute, replicate, and recover workloads between our Milan and Rome facilities. This design is essential for ensuring business continuity and compliance with European and national regulations like GDPR and, even more so today, the NIS2 framework is, step by step, coming into place. It also provides a clear geographic mapping of data, which is a critical requirement for organizations that demand to know exactly where their assets reside.
• Flexibility and Integration: A key technical factor was CloudStack’s multi-hypervisor support. By integrating both KVM and VMware, we could align the platform with our customers’ diverse environments and needs. This allows us to maintain a unified operational model while supporting everything from legacy workloads to modern cloud-native deployments.
• A Scalable, Open Model: We wanted to democratize access to cloud resources. CloudStack enabled us to build our environment on a pay-per-use model, giving partners and customers the freedom to scale dynamically without large upfront investments. This keeps costs aligned with actual consumption and, combined with CloudStack’s simplicity, streamlines management. Our teams can now focus on performance and innovation rather than licensing complexity. Our customers have the confidence and freedom to use the platform, always knowing the costs and never encountering unexpected expenses.

This combination of sovereignty, flexibility, and a transparent cost model has been validated by the market. The ultimate recognition of this strategy comes from our customers and partners. Today, our CloudStack platform actively runs approximately 1,000 virtual machines, distributed across the two zones hosted in our Milan and Rome data centers. This adoption is a clear testament to the trust our customers have placed in this powerful, sovereign cloud solution.

Our Migration Story: Enabling Customer Journeys to the Cloud

Our journey wasn’t a simple “lift-and-shift” migration but rather an evolution of our platform to create a unified, hybrid-ready environment. The “migration story” is about how we enable our customers to bridge their existing systems with the cloud.

CloudStack’s strength in multi-hypervisor support (KVM and VMware) was the solution. This allows us to seamlessly onboard customers regardless of their current virtualization platform. Furthermore, CloudStack enabled true hybrid integration. We can now bridge on-premise systems and cloud resources through secure networking and orchestration. The result is a cloud that adapts to the real-world needs of our customers, rather than forcing them to adapt to us.

The flexibility of the platform, combined with the competence and availability of the CDLAN team, has been critical. We don’t just provide infrastructure; we support our customers through every phase of their migration, from planning and architecture to deployment and optimization.

Here are three examples of how this partnership works in practice:

Case 1: The Cloud PBX Provider – Scaling with Cost-Effectiveness A leading Italian Cloud PBX provider needed a platform that was flexible, highly reliable, and, above all, cost-effective to host their core service. Their business model depends on deploying a high volume of virtual machines, each with a specific, small footprint. They found hyperscaler solutions to be financially unpredictable and rigid for this model. The Migration Journey began with a few instances for testing and POC. In a very short time the partner understood the potential of the platform and asked us to support them during a massive migration of all their virtual machines hosted on several cloud services across Italian providers to Cloudstack. Our team worked closely with them to plan the migration and today they run approximately 400 virtual machines on our cloud. The elasticity and pay-per-use model of our CloudStack deployment meant they could rapidly spin up new PBX instances for their clients, but also suspend or stop them based on need without facing upfront or residual costs. The CDLAN team ensured the underlying infrastructure provided the rock-solid reliability their telephony service demands. They achieved the scale and cost-effectiveness they needed to grow their business.

Case 2: The Data-Intensive Client – Delivering Performance Without Unpredictable Costs A second customer had the opposite challenge: they needed to run complex, in-memory data-processing workloads that required an enormous amount of RAM. At the time of their migration, their only viable options appeared to be hyperscalers, but this came with unpredictable billing and high costs that made budgeting impossible. The Migration Journey: They found our platform could deliver the “monster VMs” they needed. The flexibility of our CloudStack environment allowed us to provision virtual machines with 256GB and even 512GB of dedicated RAM. Our team’s competence was crucial, supporting them during the migration, helping them move the VMs from their on-premises datacenter to our cloud solution but also, converting the VM format from VMWare ESXi to KVM qcow2

Case 3: The Pharmaceutical Company – Guaranteeing Compliance and Data Integrity For a company in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, the primary migration driver was not cost or performance, but compliance. They were bound by strict internal regulations on data integrity and faced increasing pressure from national and European regulations like GDPR and the new NIS2 directive that their on-premises datacenter and managing model could not sustain. They were struggling between the need to face important investments to build a new datacenter and the parallel need to change their operative model to achieve  compliance with the new regulatory demands. The Migration Journey was a meticulous, security-first process. The customer found that our sovereign cloud, with all data hosted in our Italian data centers, was the only solution that could meet their stringent requirements. The CDLAN team worked side by side with the customer, helping them with the virtual machine conversion from Microsoft Hyper-V to KVM, providing the necessary documentation, audit support, and architectural guidance to ensure their platform was fully compliant. We demonstrated how the platform’s multi-zone architecture and security controls protected their data integrity, allowing them to innovate while adhering to every single regulation.

Our Engagement: A Manifest for a Better Cloud

Our engagement with Apache CloudStack began as an infrastructure project , but it has quickly evolved into a strategic enabler for new cloud services. Today, our CloudStack-powered environment is one of the basis, probably the strongest for our entire IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) solution, under a sovereign framework.

In our experience, CloudStack has proven that openness and reliability can coexist. This platform is our manifest that demonstrates a cloud solution can be simple, flexible, stable, predictable and convenient , designed to let our customers “Shape their Business in Cloud” with a truly frictionless experience.

This is what our sovereign IaaS solution, powered by CloudStack, offers you:

• Freedom from Complexity: We provide performance similar to a physical infrastructure, but we remove all the cost and complexity of managing the hardware and all the complex underlying orchestration. The management, monitoring, and updating of the core infrastructure is our responsibility. This frees internal IT teams to focus on strategic growth and business priorities, not just keeping the lights on.
• Total Financial Control: Our model is built on a true pay-per-use payment system. You pay only for the resources you are actually using , leading to optimized IT costs and simplified invoicing. There are no hidden fees or complex licensing—even public IPs and internet traffic are included. This is the scalability you need, allowing you to increase or reduce services dynamically according to your needs.
• Complete Operational Autonomy: Through a simple, easy-to-use console, teams get full, autonomous control over virtual resources. they can create, start, and shut down VMs , load their own ISOs , create customized templates from existing VMs to simplify deployment , schedule volume snapshots for a first very simple mechanism of backups, copy them across zones in order to be able to restart the business on a different location in case of disaster, define private networks with virtual firewalls and, in general, gain flexibility to do everything required as with an on-premises solution.
• A Platform Built to follow Needs: Whether you run on Linux KVM or VMware, our multi-hypervisor platform supports any workload. You get constantly updated, cutting-edge technology backed by a dedicated team of experts to support your IT staff.
• Unmatched Performance and Low Latency: Our strategic data center locations, particularly our presence in Milan with direct proximity to the main Italian Internet Exchange (MIX), ensure minimal latency for services access. This provides the fastest, most responsive access for applications and end-users.
• A Fully Integrated Service Ecosystem: We understand that virtual machines are just the beginning. IaaS tenant is the core of cloud-based infrastructure, and we surround it with the high-value services. Our platform is fully integrated with:

• Advanced Data Protection: Go beyond basic snapshots with managed Backup as a Service (BaaS) powered by Veeam technology.
• Flexible Storage Options: Seamlessly attach dedicated block storage via Storage as a Service (iSCSI) or scale limitlessly with S3-compatible object storage.
• Advanced Security: Protect entire tenants with a dedicated, enterprise-grade firewall service.
• True Hybrid Connectivity: Directly connect IaaS environment with physical devices hosted in our data center with dedicated L2 link interconnections.

Your Partner for a Sovereign Cloud

Our journey with Apache CloudStack is not just a technical success story; it is a strategic choice for a different kind of cloud. It proves that it is possible to build a top-tier IaaS platform that is open, flexible, and powerful, all while guaranteeing the data sovereignty that modern European enterprises demand.

But a platform itself is only half the solution. The true power of our cloud comes from the combination of CloudStack’s robust architecture CDLAN’s interconnected low-latency data centers and our rich ecosystem of integrated services.This entire environment is managed by the expert technical teams that design, support, and optimize it.

Technology alone doesn’t solve business challenges. It’s the competence and availability of our engineers that makes the difference. Our team partners with customers through every phase—from complex migration planning and architectural design to performance optimization—ensuring their journey to the cloud is simple, seamless and successful. We have built the cloud we believe our customers deserve: one that is transparent, cost-effective, and adapts to their needs, not the other way around.

We are proud to be part of the vibrant Apache CloudStack community. We invite you to learn more about our sovereign IaaS solution and discover how you can accelerate your own journey to the cloud, backed by a partner and an expert team you can trust.