Most companies don't use cloud. They rent someone else's data center and call it cloud.
They took their on-prem thinking, moved it to AWS, and nothing changed except the invoice. Virtual machines, a load balancer in front, a database that runs 24/7 whether anyone uses it or not. The architecture diagram looks the same as it did in 2010. The bill is higher.
Hi! I'm Joost. Senior cloud architect, over 10 years AWS, 3 years Azure. I build event-driven, serverless, composable systems and I write about the gap between how most teams use cloud and how it should actually work.
Serverless and composable PaaS beat managed infrastructure, which beats VMs. Almost every time.
That's not a vibe, it's a position I'll argue. The cost floor of a properly built serverless system sits near zero. Security gets fine grained instead of one credential for a whole machine. Deploys are code, not a runbook. The blog is where I make that case, with real numbers and actual code.
And I built the proof. A fully serverless, self-hosted email server that deploys on your own AWS account in minutes and runs for about a dollar a month. Bring-your-own-cloud, API-driven, no managed SaaS sitting in the middle. Everything I argue for, in one system you can actually run.