NeoClouds? Stop Renting Hardware And Start Building Platforms.

In today’s cloud landscape, the term “NeoCloud” is frequently used, often without a true understanding of what it should represent. Many so-called NeoClouds appear to be offering modern, cloud-native services, but a closer look reveals a different reality. These providers are often simply rebranding traditional hosting solutions — renting out bare metal, spinning up virtual machines (VMs), or leasing GPUs — but with little to no innovation in terms of how the infrastructure is operated or delivered. This is not the cloud-native revolution many claim it to be. This is just old-school hosting with a modern UI.

The real opportunity in the cloud space stays not in offering commoditized infrastructure, but in creating true cloud-native platforms. These platforms are more than just compute, storage, or networking. They are systems designed to drive value for users, with built-in scalability, automation, governance, and a focus on developer experience. Building these platforms requires more than rebranding; it requires a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is managed and consumed.

The Illusion of Progress

For developers, most NeoClouds don't feel like a platform: they still feel like infrastructure. They are left to deal with the complexities of managing their environments, configuring clusters, securing workloads, ensuring proper isolation, and dealing with inconsistencies between different cloud environments. Developers don’t want to manage infrastructure. They want a platform that allows them to focus on their core work: building software.

They want a platform that:

• Simplifies their tasks by automating complex workflows

• Accelerates delivery by making it easier to provision and manage resources

• Just works without the overhead of manually provision different parts of the stack

The key distinction here is the difference between selling infrastructure and offering a true platform.

• Selling infrastructure shifts complexity onto the users, leaving them responsible for configuring, managing, and securing resources.

• Providing a platform, on the other hand, removes much of that complexity. A true platform abstracts away much of the heavy lifting, allowing developers to focus on building products rather than managing infrastructure.

For cloud providers, offering a platform is not just a technical improvement, it’s a strategic move that unlocks higher margins, differentiation, and long-term customer retention.

The Shift to Platform Thinking

To build a real platform, cloud providers must shift both their architectural approach and operational practices. The move from infrastructure to platform thinking requires a commitment to several key areas of focus.

At Clastix, we work with new-generation infrastructure providers who understand that building a real platform is about more than just renting resources. These companies are investing in the following critical components:

1. Multi-tenancy

A true platform needs to be able to serve multiple customers in an isolated and secure manner, while maintaining efficiency at scale. Multi-tenancy allows providers to host many tenants on the same physical infrastructure without sacrificing security or performance. It ensures that each customer’s workloads are isolated, reducing the risk of one customer’s issues impacting another.

2. Automation

Automation is at the heart of any cloud-native platform. Providers need to enable their users to provision, manage, and scale clusters without needing direct intervention. True automation reduces the operational overhead for both the provider and the end user. When clusters can be provisioned and configured automatically, developers can focus on building applications rather than worrying about the intricacies of underlying infrastructure.

3. API-driven and GitOps workflows

Modern development practices are based on automation and integration. API-first designs and GitOps workflows are essential for enabling developers to work in a seamless, version-controlled manner. By integrating these practices into the platform, infrastructure providers can ensure their platform fits naturally into modern developer pipelines, accelerating delivery and reducing friction.

4. High-density control plane

Scaling an environment without increasing operational complexity is a key challenge for any cloud provider. High-density control planes help lower the per-tenant resource requirements, improving operational efficiency while maintaining the ability to scale. These shared environments allow the provider to serve multiple tenants with minimal overhead.

5. Governance

Governance is necessary to enforce policies, control access, and maintain compliance across all workloads. By having built-in governance controls, providers can offer their customers peace of mind knowing that their data and infrastructure are secure and compliant.

This shift towards platform thinking enables environments where:

• Developers can build applications faster, with less friction between them and the infrastructure.

• Scaling workloads doesn’t require scaling operations teams linearly.

• Security, cost management, and compliance are built into the platform, not afterthoughts.

• The infrastructure itself becomes a product, a managed, consistent service that users can depend on.

The focus is no longer on simply mimicking hyperscalers. The aim is to build something specific to the needs of the target market: efficient, targeted, and value-driven platforms that allow businesses to control their costs, performance, and user experience.

How Clastix Helps You Build the Platform

Clastix provides the tools that help infrastructure providers make this shift from infrastructure to platform. We give you a foundation to deliver multi-tenant, Kubernetes-powered platforms at scale.

At the core of our platform is Kamaji, an open-source control plane manager for Kubernetes. Kamaji is designed to run multiple Kubernetes clusters, cutting costs and complexity while increasing operational efficiency. This design is a key part of what enables a true cloud-native platform: the ability to scale without exponentially increasing the overhead or complexity.

On top of Kamaji, our Clastix Enterprise Platform includes:

• Full automation for cluster lifecycle management, allowing users to provision and manage clusters with minimal human intervention.

• Governance tools for managing access, isolation, policy enforcement, and compliance, all within a single, unified framework.

• Commercial-grade support and integration options that allow providers to easily integrate Clastix into their existing operations and workflows.

This gives providers the right foundation to run Kubernetes at scale, without needing to build complex systems from scratch. Our platform empowers you to deliver value to your users, allowing you to focus on your business and the needs of your customers.

GPU-Powered NeoClouds: Clastix + HelixML

As more workloads become GPU-intensive, especially with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), infrastructure providers need to ensure their platforms can handle these specialized use cases. But offering GPU resources is not as simple as just renting out hardware. It requires an integrated solution that allows for orchestration, isolation, and scalable GPU access.

That’s where HelixML comes in. We have partnered with HelixML, an open-source platform designed to manage GPU resources and deliver machine learning workloads as a service. With HelixML integrated into our platform, infrastructure providers can offer:

• Self-service GPU access that lets developers provision and use GPU resources on-demand.

• Automated orchestration of GPU workloads, including scheduling and isolation, with Kubernetes.

• Ready-to-use templates for AI/ML teams to quickly deploy and scale their workloads.

By combining Clastix’s platform and HelixML, GPU-powered NeoClouds can offer a fully-featured, GPU-native platform that integrates multi-tenancy, automation, and governance from the ground up. This allows providers to scale their offerings and reduce operational overhead, all while meeting the specific needs of AI/ML customers.

The Outcome

The shift from infrastructure to platform is happening. More and more providers are moving beyond renting raw compute and instead offering fully managed platforms that enable their customers to innovate faster, scale more efficiently, and manage complexity with ease.

The most competitive NeoClouds are already making this shift, offering developer-ready environments that reduce operational noise, accelerate time-to-market, and deliver higher value. If you're ready to transition from basic infrastructure to a true cloud-native platform — scalable, automated, and designed to deliver real value — Clastix provides the foundation to help you build it.

Let’s focus on building smarter platforms — not just competing on price.