Some teams “know” they should be in the cloud, but day to day it’s hard to justify a big change. If any of the signs below sound familiar, you’re already paying the cost of staying put—just spread across slow releases, weekend firefighting and creeping bills. Here’s how to spot it, and what the move can unlock.
1) Releases are fragile and slow
If shipping a small feature means scheduling an evening window, crossing your fingers and having three people on standby “just in case”, your platform is telling you it’s outgrown itself.
Cloud fix: CI/CD, blue/green or canary deploys, and infrastructure as code make releases boring (in the best way). You get rollback buttons instead of all-hands-on-deck.
Quick self-check
- Do you deploy less than once per day because it’s risky?
- Do rollbacks require manual server tweaks?
2) Capacity planning is guesswork
Traffic spikes, seasonal peaks or one good PR mention shouldn’t melt your servers—or your budget. If buying hardware “just in case” ties up capital, or if you run hot and pray it holds, it’s time.
Cloud fix: Autoscaling lets you match resources to real demand. Scale up during peaks, down when it’s quiet, and stop paying for idle metal.
Quick self-check
- Did you have to throttle features or turn off analytics during a surge?
- Is there a cupboard full of underused kit that still depreciates?
3) Security and compliance keep you awake
Patching hosts, rotating secrets, segmenting networks and proving controls to auditors is a lot when you’re also trying to build product. Gaps appear in busy weeks—and attackers love busy weeks.
Cloud fix: Private networking (VPC), managed secrets, baseline hardening and audited controls reduce the blast radius and the admin. You keep ownership; the platform lifts the heavy bits.
Quick self-check
- Are secrets still living in env files and wikis?
- When was your last restore test—and did it actually work?
4) Your engineers are doing “plumbing”, not product
If bright people are babysitting databases, wrangling backups or nursing brittle build servers, you’re leaving value on the table.
Cloud fix: Managed databases, queues, caches and observability move toil off your backlog. Your team ships features; the platform handles uptime, patches and scale.
Quick self-check
- How many sprint points go to maintenance rather than customer outcomes?
- Would your roadmap speed up if ops was 50% lighter?
5) Costs are rising—but value isn’t
Data growth, ad-hoc servers and shadow IT create noisy bills. On-prem, you pay upfront and still chase utilisation; in a badly tuned cloud, you pay for waste.
Cloud fix: FinOps basics—right-sizing, lifecycle policies for storage, egress awareness, and cost alerts—turn spend into a lever, not a surprise.
Quick self-check
- Can you explain this month’s infra spend in two sentences?
- Do you have alerts for runaway jobs/egress before the invoice lands?