Talk Nerdy to Me
devops
cloud-engineering
platform-engineering
managed-services
predictions
2026

The 2026 Blueprint

Why DIY Infrastructure Is Becoming a Liability

My prediction for 2026: enterprises still running DIY infrastructure will fall behind. With 89% multi-cloud adoption, explosive edge growth, and a $5.5 trillion skills gap looming—the complexity has crossed a threshold. Here's the data-driven case for why managed services aren't weakness, they're strategic advantage.

My 2026 Prediction

Enterprises still running DIY infrastructure will fall behind—not because they lack talent, but because the complexity has crossed a threshold where specialization beats generalization.

This isn't speculation. The data from 2025 paints a clear picture of where we're headed.

The 2025 Evidence

Four megatrends converged in 2025 that make DIY infrastructure increasingly untenable. Here's what the data shows.

1. Multi-Cloud Is Now Default

89%

Enterprise Adoption

of enterprises now have multi-cloud strategies

3.4

Cloud Providers

average number per organization

$723B

Cloud Spending

projected for 2025, up 21.5% YoY

The Reality: Managing multi-cloud is "challenging" for 80% of enterprises, according to Flexera. With cloud interconnectivity spending at $9.6 billion in 2025, organizations are paying premium prices just to keep their clouds talking to each other.

2. Edge Computing Is Exploding

$350B

Market Size by 2027

according to IDC projections

180 ZB

New Data by 2025

IDC estimates—driving edge computing demand

Why This Matters: The roll-out of 5G networks, smart city programs, and data sovereignty mandates are pushing compute to the edge at unprecedented rates. Managing distributed infrastructure across dozens—or hundreds—of edge locations requires specialized expertise that most internal teams simply don't have.

3. AI Demands Specialized Infrastructure

95%

Cloud-Native Workloads

will be on cloud-native platforms by 2025 (Gartner)

GPU

Shortages

AI demand pushed cloud platforms to their limits in 2025

80%

DevOps Platform Adoption

of orgs will use DevOps platforms by 2027 (Gartner)

The Challenge: AI infrastructure isn't just "more servers." It requires specialized GPU orchestration, model serving infrastructure, vector databases, and MLOps pipelines. A major AWS outage in 2025 exposed how dependent enterprises are on hyperscalers—and how unprepared internal teams are for resilience at AI scale.

4. Serverless Is Eating Traditional Compute

$76.9B

Serverless Market by 2030

23.7% CAGR from $26.5B in 2025

25-35%

IT Cost Reduction

NIST estimates for serverless adoption

The Shift: Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) dominates with 61% market share. But here's the catch—troubleshooting serverless apps takes 2.4x longer than monoliths because logs scatter across services. DIY teams struggle with observability at serverless scale.

The Skills Crisis Nobody's Solving

The Numbers Are Damning

90%

of organizations face IT skills shortages by 2026 (IDC)

$5.5T

estimated cost of skills shortage by 2026 (IDC)

37%

of IT leaders cite DevOps skills as their primary gap

85.2M

global software engineer shortage by 2030 (U.S. DoL)

The Salary Reality: DevOps engineers command $85K-$130K. Cloud DevOps Engineers with AI experience? $120K-$160K. DevSecOps Architects? $170K-$205K. And you're competing with every other company trying to build the same capabilities in-house.

Your Team's Time Is Finite

What DIY Teams Spend Time On:

  • Maintaining Kubernetes clusters
  • Patching and security updates
  • Debugging networking issues
  • Managing certificates and secrets
  • Writing Terraform for the 100th time

What They Should Spend Time On:

  • Building features customers pay for
  • Improving developer experience
  • Shipping faster than competitors
  • Innovating on core business logic
  • Creating competitive advantages

Why Managed Services Aren't Weakness

They're Strategic Advantage

60%+

MSP Adoption by 2025

More than 60% of organizations will rely on Managed Service Providers, underscoring their pivotal role in modern IT strategies

$258.6B

Market by 2032

Cloud managed services growing from $131.7B in 2025 at 9.89% CAGR

The digital landscape has moved past simple cloud migration toward "Cloud Mastery"—running highly complex, distributed environments with zero downtime. The pressure on internal IT teams has become unsustainable.

Why Specialists Win:

Economies of Scale

MSPs spread infrastructure costs across hundreds of clients

Dedicated Expertise

Teams that do nothing but Kubernetes, security, or ML infrastructure

Continuous Optimization

Full-time focus on cost governance and performance tuning

24/7 Coverage

Follow-the-sun support without building three global teams

The 2026 Playbook for Successful Companies

1. Let Specialists Handle Infrastructure Complexity

The most successful companies in 2026 will recognize that infrastructure management is not their core competency—and that's okay. They'll partner with specialists who live and breathe Kubernetes, multi-cloud networking, and AI infrastructure.

Action: Audit which infrastructure components are truly differentiating vs. commodity. Outsource the commodity layers.

2. Focus Engineering Talent on Business Value

With 90% of organizations facing IT skills shortages by 2026, every engineer hour matters. The companies that win will direct their scarce engineering talent toward features that drive revenue—not YAML configuration.

Action: Calculate how many engineering hours go to infrastructure maintenance vs. feature development. Set targets to flip the ratio.

3. Treat Infrastructure as a Service, Not a Project

DIY infrastructure is a never-ending project. There's always another upgrade, another security patch, another scaling challenge. Managed services convert this unpredictable project work into predictable operational expense.

Action: Shift budget from CapEx infrastructure projects to OpEx managed services. Your CFO will thank you for the predictability.

The Bottom Line

The teams still wrestling with Kubernetes configs while competitors ship features?

They're already behind.

The DIY Path (2026)

  • Fighting for scarce DevOps talent
  • Burning engineering hours on maintenance
  • Struggling with multi-cloud complexity
  • Reacting to outages instead of preventing them
  • Watching competitors ship faster

The Managed Path (2026)

  • Leveraging specialist expertise on-demand
  • Focusing engineers on product innovation
  • Treating infrastructure as operational expense
  • Predictable costs, predictable performance
  • Shipping features while others patch servers

DevOps managed services aren't a sign of weakness—they're a sign that you understand where your competitive advantage actually lies.

What's Your Take?

Is DIY infrastructure still worth it for your organization?

The answer might depend on your scale, your talent pool, and whether infrastructure management is genuinely a competitive differentiator for your business.

Sources

Back to Blog