Nutanix Inc., which provides to large enterprises and service providers, is mulling the idea of selling a software-only version of its product, executives said on Wednesday.

Even more enticing though is that Nutanix is also considering selling its software to those customers on a subscription, as well as through enterprise licensing agreements, said Sudheesh Nair, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and alliances. Nair’s comments came during a keynote at the Nutanix .NEXT 2015 conference in Miami.

Selling software-only versions of its product via subscription would be a big departure for Nutanix, which has traditionally always sold its software pre-installed on Supermicro servers. The only other way to get Nutanix is through Dell’s PowerEdge servers (Dell has an OEM agreement to sell Nutanix’s software). hyper-converged infrastructure

The move would help Nutanix to turn up the pressure on its main rival VMware Inc., CRN.com suggested. VMware is generally seen as the number one hyper-converged infrastructure vendor in the enterprise and service provider space, but Nutanix has been snapping away at its heels in the last year or so.

And Nutanix is keen to keep on squeezing VMware at every opportunity. “We’re not afraid of competing in a software-only world,” said Nair in his keynote, though he didn’t elaborate on when the company might do that.

But it does look like it’ll happen, sooner or later. Tal Klein, vice president of strategy at Lakeside Software Inc., a Nutanix partner, told CRN.com that many service providers prefer the subscription-based model.

“We’re seeing a lot of our service provider and system integrator partners ask to migrate to SaaS-style, subscription-based licensing as well,” said Klein. “This makes it easier to true-up, and that way, we get to monitor utilization while they only pay for what they consume.”

A software-only offering isn’t the only way Nutanix is trying to squeeze VMware. Earlier this week, the company rolled out its own KVM-based hypervisor, called Acropolis, together with software that can convert VMware virtual machines to alternative formats like KVM and Microsoft’s Hyper-V.