From Cloud First To Cloud Fit: Rethinking Where Workloads Belong
Cloud Native Now, Wednesday, January 7th, 2026
Induprakas 'Indu' Keri explores why organizations are increasingly shifting from a cloud-first mindset to a cloud-fit strategy as containerized applications mature.
Indu's take is simple: the public cloud is fantastic when you're still figuring things out. Early in an application's life-product-market fit, rapid experimentation, the 'I need five servers and I need them now' phase-cloud wins because speed and elasticity matter more than anything else. Same thing when you hit the growth curve and need to scale fast.
But then reality shows up. Many containerized and modernized apps eventually settle into something closer to steady-state. And once usage becomes predictable, the tradeoffs get louder: cost, long-term contracts, data gravity, and the uncomfortable realization that 'elasticity' doesn't always shrink back down the way the slide decks promised.