# Application Operations Switzerland

> VSHN operates your software product as a managed service: Swiss-hosted instances, 24/7 operations, monitoring, and compliance for regulated industries.

VSHN runs your product for your customers: one dedicated instance each, hosted in Switzerland or on-premises, with 24/7 operations, monitoring, and compliance for regulated industries. You keep building the product; we keep it running.


## Pages

- [Homepage](https://www.application-operations.ch/): Application Operations Switzerland for Software Vendors
- [Partner with VSHN on Application Operations | VSHN](https://www.application-operations.ch/partners.md)
- [Application Operations Sovereignty: Swiss Managed Operations for ISVs | VSHN](https://www.application-operations.ch/sovereignty.md)

## Features

- **Production Operations Since 2014**: VSHN has run production infrastructure for regulated Swiss organizations since 2014 and was Switzerland's first CNCF Kubernetes Certified Service Provider in 2016. Your customers get an operations team that has already solved the reliability, security, and compliance problems your product will encounter at scale.

- **24/7 Support**: Round-the-clock on-call coverage for every customer instance, with a one-hour response for critical incidents. You promise your customers a reliable managed service without hiring four to six engineers to staff a 24/7 on-call rotation yourself.

- **Monitoring and Incident Management**: VSHN sets up and continuously refines monitoring for your defined service level indicators, then reacts to alerts: triage, resolution, or escalation, with every incident logged in your ticket system. This is the "taking care" layer: someone is always watching each customer instance and acting when something breaks.

- **Managed Configuration, Updates and Changes**: Configuration, version updates, and change requests are handled as managed operations, applied consistently across every customer instance. Your release ships once; VSHN rolls it out, verifies it, and keeps each deployment patched against security advisories.

- **Compliance and References**: VSHN is ISO 27001 certified and operates for HIN (over 90% of Swiss healthcare stakeholders), Finnova and acrevis in banking, and the Swiss Federal Archives. When your regulated customers run due diligence, you point to references and certifications instead of building a compliance program from scratch.

- **Swiss and On-Premises Hosting**: Each customer instance runs on Swiss infrastructure from Cloudscale or Exoscale, or on the customer's own premises, with no hyperscaler dependency. Data residency and sovereignty requirements from finance, healthcare, and government customers are met by design.

- **Proactive Operations**: Beyond reacting to incidents, VSHN looks for recurring patterns and proposes improvements: capacity headroom before customers hit limits, backup and restore testing with runbooks, and security baseline reviews. Operations get quieter over time instead of noisier.


## What VSHN operates for every customer instance

- **24/7 Incident Response**: On-call engineers act on alerts within defined SLI targets, investigate and fix the issue or route it to your team, and log every incident in your ticket system.
- **Monitoring and Alerting**: Continuously refined monitoring of your service level indicators with health-check endpoints and false-positive reduction.
- **Configuration and Change Management**: Consistent configuration, version updates, and change requests applied and verified across every customer instance.
- **Backups and Restore Testing**: Automated backups with periodic restore drills and documented runbooks so you can verify recovery, not just hope for it.
- **Security Baseline and Patching**: Security advisories tracked and patches applied across instances, with baseline reviews to meet regulated-industry requirements.
- **Swiss and On-Premises Hosting**: Each instance on Cloudscale, Exoscale, or customer premises, keeping data residency and sovereignty intact.
- **Proactive Capacity and Improvements**: Recurring-issue analysis, capacity headroom planning, and improvement proposals so the same alert rarely fires twice.
- **Compliance Evidence**: ISO 27001-certified operations and named Swiss references to support your customers' due diligence and audits.

## The economics of outsourced operations

- **Application Operations** — from CHF 800/month — Application operations per application, up to 50 instances; CHF 400/month per additional similar application
- **Monitoring (Office Hours)** — from CHF 100/month — 5x9 monitoring and alert handling per service level indicator; CHF 50/month per additional instance
- **Monitoring (24/7)** — from CHF 1,200/month — Round-the-clock monitoring and incident response per service level indicator; CHF 200/month per additional instance

Genuine 24/7 coverage requires four to six engineers at CHF 150,000 to 200,000 each per year. VSHN delivers the equivalent operations for roughly the cost of half a full-time engineer (0.5 FTE). All prices in CHF, excluding VAT. Cloud provider compute is billed separately. Final pricing depends on the number of customer instances and your SLA.


## Application Operations FAQ for software vendors

### What does "application operations as a service" mean for an ISV?

It means VSHN operates your software product on your behalf for each of your customers, one dedicated instance per customer, hosted in Switzerland or on-premises. You keep building the product while VSHN handles 24/7 monitoring, incident response, updates, backups, and compliance, so you can sell an SLA-backed managed service.


### What SLA can I offer my customers through VSHN?

VSHN provides defined response-time SLAs (typically a one-hour response for critical incidents) and operates managed platform components with availability up to 99.99% on Swiss infrastructure. The exact SLA depends on whether you choose office-hours or 24/7 coverage and is fixed in a written service agreement per instance.


### How much does it cost compared to hiring my own operations team?

Application operations start from CHF 800 per month per application and monitoring from CHF 100 per month per service level indicator. Genuine 24/7 coverage requires four to six engineers at CHF 150,000 to 200,000 each per year; VSHN delivers the equivalent for roughly the cost of half a full-time engineer, with no recruitment timeline.


### Where is my customers' data hosted?

Each instance runs on Swiss infrastructure from Cloudscale or Exoscale, or on the customer's own premises, independent of AWS, Azure, and GCP. This keeps data residency and sovereignty intact for customers in finance, healthcare, government, energy, and telco who require their data to remain in Switzerland.


### Are backups and disaster recovery included?

Yes. VSHN configures automated backups for every customer instance and performs periodic restore testing with documented runbooks, so recovery is proven rather than assumed. Backup scope, retention, and recovery objectives are agreed per instance and verified as part of ongoing operations, not left as a one-time setup.


### What compliance and certifications does VSHN bring?

VSHN is ISO 27001 certified and is a Red Hat Premier Certified Cloud and Service Provider. It operates for regulated organizations including HIN, which serves over 90% of Swiss healthcare stakeholders, the banks Finnova and acrevis, and the Swiss Federal Archives, all references your customers can rely on during due diligence.


### How does VSHN handle monitoring and incident response?

VSHN sets up and continuously refines monitoring for your defined service level indicators, usually HTTP health-check endpoints. When an alert fires, VSHN engineers investigate, fix the issue or route it to your team, and log the incident in your ticket system. Recurring issues are analyzed and turned into improvement proposals so the same problem does not repeat.


### Do you manage updates and configuration changes to my software?

Yes. Configuration, version updates, and change requests are handled as managed operations and rolled out consistently across every customer instance. You ship a release once; VSHN deploys it, verifies it, and keeps each instance patched against security advisories, so no customer is left running an outdated or vulnerable version.


### Can VSHN operate my software on a customer's own premises?

Yes. In addition to Swiss cloud hosting on Cloudscale and Exoscale, VSHN can operate your software inside a customer's own data center when contracts or regulation require it. The same 24/7 operations, monitoring, backups, and compliance practices apply regardless of where each instance physically runs.


### Can VSHN operate software you have never seen before?

Yes. VSHN does not need to understand your application code. You define the service level indicators (typically HTTP health-check endpoints), and VSHN monitors them, responds to alerts, and manages the infrastructure underneath. You ship releases; VSHN deploys them, verifies them, and keeps each instance patched. You own the software logic; VSHN owns keeping it running reliably.


### How do I get started?

Request a cost estimate and a VSHN architect will review your software, deployment model, customer SLAs, and compliance needs, then propose a tailored operations setup with transparent per-instance pricing. There is no commitment at the estimate stage, and you receive a written scope before any operations work begins.


## Get a cost estimate for operating your software

Tell us about your product, how your customers consume it, and the SLA and compliance they require. A VSHN architect will propose a tailored operations setup with transparent per-instance pricing. No commitment required.


Booking: #contact

## Comparison

- **Intro**: Operating software for regulated customers has a quality floor. Below it, you fail audits, miss SLAs, and lose deals. Above it, running operations yourself only looks cheaper until you account for 24/7 staffing, on-call burnout, and the cost of a single compliance miss.

- **Takeaway**: If your customers need more than best-effort operations, partnering with VSHN is lower cost and lower risk than doing it yourself.

---

## Partner with VSHN on Application Operations | VSHN

# Partner with VSHN on Application Operations

You advise software vendors on architecture, compliance, or go-to-market. Some of your clients want to offer their product as a managed service but lack the operations team to run customer instances 24/7 in Switzerland. VSHN fills that gap: 24/7 operations, monitoring, SLA, and compliance evidence for every customer instance your client serves.

## Who this is for

- **IT consulting firms** whose ISV clients need managed operations for their product
- **System integrators** deploying ISV software into regulated Swiss environments
- **Cloud consultancies** recommending Swiss-hosted alternatives to hyperscaler services

## How we collaborate

**Lead Partner model.** For each project, one of us is the customer's single point of contact. Who leads depends on the project, agreed per engagement. The Lead Partner drives the project, handles invoicing, and owns first-level support.

**Joint delivery.** You handle consulting, integration, and project management. VSHN handles infrastructure operations, monitoring, backups, and SLA. Roles are agreed per engagement, not locked into a rigid structure.

**Flexible billing.** Invoice the customer together or separately, agreed per project. Both models are supported: each party invoices their share directly, or one party invoices the full amount and redistributes.

**Protected relationships.** No undercutting. Your customer stays your customer. Existing relationships are respected on both sides, with contractual protections for both parties.

## Division of labor for Application Operations

| Your role | VSHN's role |
|-----------|-------------|
| Architecture consulting and solution design | 24/7 application operations per customer instance |
| Integration, onboarding, and data migration | Monitoring, alerting, and incident response |
| Compliance advisory and audit preparation | Security patching, backups, and restore testing |
| Go-to-market and customer relationship | SLA management with defined response times |
| Project management | Managed configuration, updates, and change rollouts |

## What you can offer your ISV clients with VSHN

- **24/7 operations**: Round-the-clock incident response for every customer instance, from CHF 800/month per application
- **Swiss hosting**: Each instance on Cloudscale, Exoscale, or customer premises, with no hyperscaler dependency
- **Compliance evidence**: ISO 27001, ISAE 3402, and references from HIN, Finnova, acrevis, and the Swiss Federal Archives
- **On-premises option**: Same operations quality inside a customer's own data center
- **Predictable pricing**: Per-instance, per-application pricing your clients can pass through to their customers

## Partners delivering with VSHN

**[tim&koko](https://tim-koko.ch)**. Cloud consulting firm delivering container migrations and platform engineering alongside VSHN-operated infrastructure.

**[Puzzle](https://puzzle.ch)**. Software company with 140+ employees. Provides cloud-native consulting and DevOps transformation alongside VSHN managed services.

**[bespinian](https://bespinian.io)**. Cloud-native consulting firm focused on Kubernetes and application delivery.

See all VSHN partners at [servala.com/partners](https://servala.com/partners/).

## Become a partner

Interested in helping your ISV clients offer managed services with Swiss operations? Let's explore how we complement each other.

[Book a partnership discovery call](https://vshn.cal.vs.hn/application-operations) or [start a partnership conversation](#contact).


---

## Application Operations Sovereignty: Swiss Managed Operations for ISVs | VSHN

# Application Operations Sovereignty: Your Product, Swiss Operations

When a regulated customer buys your software as a managed service, they inherit your operations provider's jurisdiction. If your operations run on US hyperscaler infrastructure, your customer's data falls under the [CLOUD Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act), accessible to US authorities without Swiss judicial process, regardless of which region you select.

For ISVs selling into Swiss finance, healthcare, and government, this is a deal-breaker. Your customers need Swiss data residency and a Swiss operations provider to pass due diligence.

VSHN operates your software on Swiss infrastructure from Cloudscale or Exoscale, or on your customer's own premises. Swiss company, Swiss staff, Swiss law. Your customers' data stays under Swiss jurisdiction.

## Why VSHN operations strengthen your sovereignty story

- **Swiss company, Swiss law**: VSHN AG is incorporated in Switzerland with all shareholders Swiss citizens. No foreign parent, no CLOUD Act exposure
- **Infrastructure you choose**: Each customer instance runs on Cloudscale, Exoscale, or customer premises, with no hyperscaler dependency
- **On-premises option**: When regulation or contract requires it, VSHN operates your software inside your customer's data center with the same 24/7 operations
- **Swiss operations team**: All on-call engineers are based in Switzerland. [Swiss-only support option](https://products.vshn.ch/support_plans.html#_option_switzerland_only_support) available
- **ISO 27001 certified**: Since 2014, with ISAE 3402 Type II attestation
- **Your compliance evidence**: VSHN's certifications and regulated-industry references (HIN, Finnova, acrevis, Swiss Federal Archives) become part of your customer's due diligence package

## Operations sovereignty compared

| Dimension | Your ops on AWS/Azure/GCP | Your ops team in-house | VSHN Application Operations |
|-----------|--------------------------|----------------------|----------------------------|
| **Governing law** | US law | Your jurisdiction | Swiss law |
| **CLOUD Act** | Exposed | Not exposed | Not exposed |
| **Data location** | Configurable (US-controlled) | Your choice | Switzerland or customer DC |
| **Operations team** | US-based vendor staff | Your hires | Swiss-based VSHN engineers |
| **24/7 coverage** | Vendor-dependent | 4-6 FTE minimum | Included from CHF 800/month |
| **Compliance evidence** | Vendor's certifications | You build from scratch | ISO 27001, ISAE 3402, named references |
| **On-premises** | Not available | You manage | VSHN manages on customer site |

## Compliance and regulatory readiness

VSHN operations support your customers' compliance requirements:

- **FINMA Circular 2018/3**: Outsourcing requirements for Swiss financial institutions. VSHN provides audit documentation, Swiss-only operations, and contractual commitments for regulated customers
- **EU DORA** (Digital Operational Resilience Act): ICT third-party risk management provisions. Swiss-hosted operations with documented SLAs meet DORA's requirements for critical ICT service providers
- **NIS2 Directive**: Supply chain security requirements for essential and important entities. VSHN's ISO 27001 controls map to NIS2 Article 21 requirements
- **GDPR / Swiss DPA**: Swiss data residency by default. EU adequacy decision covers Swiss-EU data transfers

## VSHN sovereignty self-assessment

We applied the EU's [Cloud Sovereignty Framework](https://commission.europa.eu/document/09579818-64a6-4dd5-9577-446ab6219113_en) (v1.2.1, October 2025) to our own services. This framework was used to score providers in the EU's [EUR 180M sovereign cloud tender](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_833) in April 2026. Three pure-European providers achieved SEAL-3, while a consortium involving Google Cloud scored only SEAL-2.

*This is a self-assessment, not a formal SEAL certification. We publish it for transparency so customers can evaluate our sovereignty profile using the same structured criteria the EU uses.*

| # | Dimension | Weight | Assessment | Evidence |
|---|-----------|--------|-----------|----------|
| SOV-1 | Strategic | 15% | **Strong** | Swiss AG, no foreign parent, all shareholders Swiss citizens ([Commercial Register](https://zh.chregister.ch/cr-portal/auszug/auszug.xhtml?uid=CHE-275.566.226)) |
| SOV-2 | Legal | 10% | **Strong** | Swiss law ([GTC](https://products.vshn.ch/legal/gtc_en.html)), no CLOUD Act, [EU adequacy decision](https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/adequacy-decisions_en) |
| SOV-3 | Data & AI | 10% | **Strong** | Swiss DCs by default. Sovereign key management via [Managed OpenBao](https://www.openbao.ch) + [Swiss HSM](https://cloud.securosys.com/cloudhsm) |
| SOV-4 | Operational | 15% | **Strong** | Swiss 24/7 ops, [Swiss-only support option](https://products.vshn.ch/support_plans.html#_option_switzerland_only_support). All services on vanilla Kubernetes |
| SOV-5 | Supply Chain | 20% | **Strong** | Infrastructure-agnostic, [customer chooses provider](https://servala.com/providers/). Open-source tooling |
| SOV-6 | Technology | 15% | **Strong** | Open-source operations tooling. VSHN contributes to [K8up](https://github.com/k8up-io) (CNCF), [Crossplane providers](https://github.com/vshn), [Project Syn](https://github.com/projectsyn) |
| SOV-7 | Security | 10% | **Strong** | [ISO 27001](https://www.vshn.ch/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/ISO-27001-certificate-VSHN-2024.pdf), ISAE 3402 Type II, Swiss SOC. [FINMA-regulated customers](https://www.vshn.ch/en/solutions/solutions-for-banks-and-financial-service-providers/) |
| SOV-8 | Environmental | 5% | **Moderate** | DC operators: Green Datacenter AG (ISO 22301/27001/27701), [Exoscale sustainability](https://www.exoscale.com/sustainability/). [VSHN CSR policy](https://handbook.vshn.ch/corporate_social_responsibility_policy.html) |

**Overall: SEAL-3 equivalent**, the same level achieved by the winners of the EU's own sovereignty tender.

## Make sovereignty part of your product

When your regulated customers ask "where is my data and who can access it?", you want a clear answer: Swiss infrastructure, Swiss operations, Swiss law. VSHN gives you that answer without building an operations team yourself.

[Get a cost estimate](#contact) for Swiss-operated application operations.