Your Platform Shouldn't Be Someone Else's Pricing Decision
50% cost reduction per SaaS tool replaced. Full ownership of your platform, your data, and your roadmap. We map the lock-in, build the business case, and execute the migration.
// THE FIVE TYPES OF LOCK-IN
You Don't Notice Lock-In Until You Try to Leave
Pricing lock-in.
Vendor raises prices 30%. You absorb it because migration is too expensive. Next year, another 20%.
Data lock-in.
Your observability data, source code, secrets, and CI/CD metadata — stored on infrastructure you don’t control, in a jurisdiction you didn’t choose.
API lock-in.
GitHub Actions workflows. Datadog dashboards. Terraform Cloud state. None of it portable. Every integration deepens the dependency.
Roadmap lock-in.
You need a feature. Vendor has other priorities. You wait, or build a workaround. Their roadmap, your problem.
Sovereignty lock-in.
US-headquartered provider. CLOUD Act applies. No contractual clause overrides US law. Your European data, their legal obligation.
// WHAT WE REPLACE
Concrete Migration Paths. Real Savings.
| From | To | Typical Annual Savings |
|---|---|---|
| Datadog | Grafana Stack (Loki, Mimir, Tempo) | EUR 300K-1.8M/year |
| GitHub Enterprise | GitLab Self-Hosted | EUR 200K-600K/year |
| LaunchDarkly | Unleash / Flagsmith | EUR 50K-200K/year |
| Auth0 / Okta | Keycloak | EUR 30K-150K/year |
| Terraform Cloud | OpenTofu | EUR 20K-100K/year |
Savings scale with team size. A 250-person engineering org replacing Datadog and GitHub alone saves EUR 500K–2.4M per year.
// THE AUDIT
The Freedom to Operate Audit
The starting point. Low commitment, high clarity.
What
Systematic mapping of every SaaS dependency — what you use, what it costs, where the lock-in is, and what the alternatives look like.
Timeline
2–3 weeks.
What You Get
- →Complete SaaS dependency inventory
- →Lock-in risk assessment per tool
- →3-year cost comparison (stay vs. migrate)
- →Prioritised migration plan
- →Business case document for CFO/board
Outcome
A clear decision — migrate or stay — backed by numbers. Not a pitch for migration. If staying makes more sense, we'll tell you.
// EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNTY
Independence Is the Goal. The Business Case Gets You There.
For many European organisations, the conversation starts with the CLOUD Act or a board question about data sovereignty. But the business case is built on economics — and the economics point the same direction as the strategy.
CLOUD Act Exposure
US law requires US companies to hand over data regardless of where it's stored. No contract overrides this.
GDPR and NIS2 Compliance
Increasingly difficult to reconcile with US-controlled infrastructure.
European Alternatives Exist
Scaleway, OVHcloud, Hetzner, STACKIT — production-ready Kubernetes, European jurisdiction, competitive pricing.
We help you move from hyperscaler dependency to European infrastructure — without disruption, without compromising capability.
// AFTER MIGRATION
What Happens Next
Don't Want to Run It Yourself?
After migration, we operate the full stack — 24x7, European team, graduated handoff as your team builds capability. You're never locked into our operations either.
Talk to us about managed operations// WHO THIS IS FOR
Is This the Right Fit?
Companies facing SaaS pricing increases they can’t control
Organisations with CFO pressure to reduce engineering tool spend
Enterprises concerned about hyperscaler dependence or CLOUD Act exposure
Platform directors building a business case for sovereignty migration
// NOT THE RIGHT FIT IF
When to Look Elsewhere
SaaS spend under EUR 100K/year. The migration investment may not pay back. We'll tell you if that's the case.
No operational capacity for self-hosted tools — and not willing to build it. Self-hosted means someone runs it. We can help with that, but you need to want the ownership.
Your primary challenge is architecture, not vendor lock-in. → Strategy & Advisory
// COMMON QUESTIONS
Questions We Hear Often
“The board is asking about European cloud, but I need to build the business case first.”
That’s exactly what we deliver. Our sovereignty readiness assessment produces a TCO analysis, risk quantification, and executive briefing materials — the ammunition you need to present options to the board with confidence. Two weeks, clear numbers, board-ready output.
“Won’t migrating from AWS be massively disruptive and expensive?”
We use a phased approach: pioneer workload first to prove the model, then progressive migration. Most clients see 30–40% cost reduction that funds the migration investment. Everything is built on portable Kubernetes patterns, so you’re never trading one lock-in for another.
“How do I know European providers can actually handle our scale?”
We’ve done the evaluation across Scaleway, OVHcloud, Hetzner, and STACKIT — technical capabilities, compliance posture, support quality, and real TCO. We’re not partners with any provider, so our recommendations are genuinely independent. We can share benchmark data from comparable workloads during a first conversation.
// CASE STUDY
Dutch Research University: 62% Cost Reduction
A Dutch research university with 2,800 researchers and 35,000 students was locked into Qualtrics for survey infrastructure — paying per response, with research data stored on US servers under CLOUD Act jurisdiction. They needed GDPR compliance and cost control without disrupting active research projects.
We migrated them to self-hosted Formbricks on European infrastructure. Result: EUR 75K annual savings, 62% cost reduction, full GDPR compliance, and unlimited responses with no per-use pricing.
Read the full story→// RELATED SERVICES
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The Freedom to Operate Audit takes 2–3 weeks. You get a complete picture — dependencies, risks, costs, alternatives — and a clear recommendation.