Introduction

When cloud giants like AWS, Google Cloud (GCP), and Microsoft Azure first appeared, they promised businesses a revolution: lower costs, seamless scalability, and infrastructure that just works. No more spending big on hardware or dealing with maintenance headaches—just pay as you go, scale when you need to, and let the cloud handle the rest.

At first glance, it seemed perfect. Companies jumped on board, excited by the idea of turning capital expenses into manageable operational expenses. But now, as more businesses grow and dig deeper into the numbers, many are realizing these platforms aren't quite the cost-savers they were marketed as. Costs are soaring, and flexibility—well, it’s not as easy to achieve as the cloud pitch initially suggested.

In this landscape, open infrastructure is stepping up as a real alternative. It doesn’t just promise cost savings—it offers freedom from vendor lock-in and gives businesses the control they need to build systems that suit their needs, not the cloud providers’. Let’s explore why the big public clouds are falling short and how open infrastructure is positioning itself as the future of IT.

The Promise of Public Cloud: Reality Check

When AWS, GCP, and Azure first launched, they made bold promises:

• Lower Costs: No need to buy expensive servers or keep data centers running.
• Scalability: Quickly adjust resources up or down as your business needs.
• Simplicity: A one-stop shop for everything you need—compute, storage, networking, and more.

For a while, it seemed like this was true. Startups and enterprises loved the idea of spinning up services without huge investments. But as businesses grew and started using more cloud resources, the story changed. What initially seemed like savings turned into unpredictable bills, and suddenly, that flexibility didn’t feel quite so easy.

Why Public Cloud Isn’t as Cheap as It Looks

• Confusing Pricing: One of the biggest complaints about public cloud services is their incredibly complex pricing models. At first, you might be paying for just a few services, and everything seems affordable. But as you expand—adding more instances, storage, or specific services—costs quickly spiral out of control. Many companies find that they’re regularly exceeding their budgets, especially once they realize how much they’re paying for things like data transfer and premium services.

• Vendor Lock-in: The deeper you go into a cloud provider’s ecosystem, the harder it is to leave. Services like AWS Lambda or Google BigQuery are convenient, but they’re built with proprietary tools that make moving to another cloud provider an expensive, time-consuming process. Once your infrastructure is tied to their services, the cost of migrating elsewhere can be staggering.

• Hidden Data Transfer Costs: One of the sneaky costs of the public cloud is egress fees—the charges for moving data out of the cloud. These fees aren’t always obvious at first but can quickly add up, especially for companies that deal with large amounts of data. For example, if you’re regularly transferring data between clouds or back to on-premises systems, you might find that your transfer fees eclipse any savings you thought you’d gain from using the cloud in the first place.

• Expensive Proprietary Services: While the basic offerings of cloud providers might seem affordable, it’s the specialized services that can break the bank. Solutions like AWS RDS or GCP’s BigQuery are powerful but come with steep pricing. As your business grows and you become more reliant on these services, the cost-benefit of using the cloud starts to fade, and moving away from them becomes a complex ordeal.

Open Infrastructure: A Better Path Forward

So, if the big public clouds aren’t delivering the cost savings and flexibility they promised, what’s the alternative? Enter open infrastructure, a way of building cloud environments that gives businesses more control, transparency, and freedom.

Open infrastructure is all about using open-source projects and standards to build your own cloud environment, whether in your private data center, a public cloud, or a hybrid model that uses both. Some of the most important technologies in this space include:

• OpenStack: An open-source cloud computing platform that lets you run your own data center just like the public cloud, but with more control over your resources and data.
• *StarlingX: A cloud infrastructure software stack for the edge used by the most demanding applications. It provides a container-based infrastructure for edge implementations in scalable solutions that is ready for production.
• Kubernetes: A popular open-source platform for running distributed applications that can work across any cloud or on-premises infrastructure, offering true flexibility.
• Ceph: An open-source solution for scalable, distributed storage that provide a real alternative to the high-priced options offered by proprietary cloud services.

Open infrastructure lets companies build their systems exactly how they need them without being locked into any one provider. This means more choice, more control, and ultimately, more freedom.

Why Open Infrastructure is the Better Choice

• Transparent Costs: With open infrastructure, you’re paying for what you use in a more straightforward way. There are no hidden fees or surprise bills. You have full visibility into your hardware and network costs and can control exactly how and where resources are deployed.
• No Vendor Lock-in: Because open infrastructure uses open standards, you’re not tied to any single cloud provider’s tools or services. This gives you the flexibility to move workloads between environments, whether that’s across different cloud providers or back on-premises, without needing to completely rebuild your systems.
• Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Flexibility: Open infrastructure makes it easy to build systems that work across multiple clouds or mix on-premises and cloud environments. With technologies like Kubernetes, you can move workloads across different environments as needed, optimizing both performance and cost while maintaining control over your architecture.
• Community-Driven Innovation: Open-source projects are powered by communities of developers from around the world. This means open infrastructure solutions are continuously evolving, improving, and adapting to the latest needs of businesses—without being driven solely by the profit motives of big tech companies.

The Open Infrastructure Movement is Growing

The 2024 State of Open Infrastructure report shows that more and more companies are moving toward open solutions, realizing the flexibility, innovation, and cost transparency they offer. Businesses across industries, from telecom to finance, are adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies powered by open technologies, finding that open infrastructure is not just a cost-saving measure but a strategic advantage.

The Open Infrastructure Foundation is leading this charge, laying out a blueprint for how open technologies can provide a scalable, reliable alternative to the traditional cloud model. Organizations that embrace open infrastructure aren’t just avoiding the downsides of public cloud—they’re also positioning themselves to innovate more quickly and adapt more easily to changing business needs.

The Future is Open - Are You Ready?

The cloud was supposed to bring lower costs, scalability, and simplicity, but for many businesses, it’s delivered the opposite. Open infrastructure is offering a way out—giving companies the control, flexibility, and cost transparency they’ve been looking for all along.

The future of IT doesn’t have to be tied to the proprietary ecosystems. It’s about building open, flexible systems that put control back in your hands.

The future is open infrastructure.