* Tags:: #🗞️Articles, [[Cloud Costs|Cloud Costs]] * Author:: [[sarah-wang|Sarah Wang]], [[Martin casado|Martin Casado]] * Link:: [The Cost of Cloud, a Trillion Dollar Paradox | Andreessen Horowitz](https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-cap-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/?s=09&utm_source=pocket-app&utm_medium=share) * Source date:: [[2021-05-27]] * Finished date:: [[2021-06-12]] Summary is: > **You’re crazy if you don’t start in the cloud; you’re crazy if you stay on it** ^da13e0 Starting in the cloud makes sense... until it doesn´t: > it’s becoming evident that while cloud clearly delivers on its promise early on in a company’s journey, the pressure it puts on margins can start to outweigh the benefits, as a company scales and growth slows. Because this shift happens later in a company’s life, it is difficult to reverse as it’s a result of years of development focused on new features, and not infrastructure optimization. Hence a rewrite or the significant restructuring needed to dramatically improve efficiency can take years, and is often considered a non-starter. "Repatriation" is hard and distracting: > And all of this requires building expertise beyond one’s core, which is not only distracting, but can itself detract from growth Those who completed a "repatriation" from the cloud ended up with **one-third to one-half the costs.**