The Carpathian Architecture

Overview

I’ve been in tech close to a decade. Two persistent problems stood out: cloud hosting is too expensive and overly complex. This drove me to found Carpathian, where we build a custom tech stack from scratch. This article explains the reasoning behind that approach, examining cloud drawbacks, from cost and vendor lock-in, to hidden complexities—backed by real users.

1. The cloud is cheaper—in theory

Public cloud on paper offers scalability, global reach, and pay‑as‑you‑go models. Users get managed services, serverless platforms, and advanced capabilities like machine learning, analytics, and edge computing.

However, real-world experience tells a different story. A Gartner survey revealed roughly 69% of IT leaders reported cloud budget overruns in 2023. The 2024 Flexera report noted public cloud expenditures exceed budgets by an average of 15%.

Reddit reflects this frustration:

“Cloud infrastructure is amazing… but price will stay the same no matter usage.”

“Billing was unpredictable and hidden costs showed up too late… Big cloud providers promised flexibility but delivered complexity.”

“I’ve read horror stories… bill $10–20k over a weekend … lack of budget cap.”

These stories aren’t outliers—they speak to a broader systemic issue: unpredictable billing, resource sprawl, and hidden expenses.

2. Complexity isn’t optional

Cloud providers package every feature imaginable. There are hundreds of services with dozens of configurations. Learning to configure, monitor, secure, and optimize all of them requires time, training, and tooling. That complexity leads to frequent mistakes.

Reddit users describe it bluntly:

“The biggest issue… people don’t fully understand the cloud platform… trying to apply on‑premise‑like processes to cloud.”

Another devops discussion echoed this: deployments blow up because of “team culture issues… over‑provisioned instances, abandoned and untagged resources.”

Wikipedia sums it up: cloud environments expose opaque shared‑responsibility models, multi‑tenant performance variability (“noisy neighbors”), SLA gaps, leaky abstractions, vendor lock‑in, and regulatory hurdles.

When complexity exists at every layer—network, IAM, encryption, compliance, autoscaling—you don’t just hire an admin, you need a team of specialists. That’s not cheap and it’s not efficient.

3. Vendor lock‑in kills flexibility

Designs optimized for AWS, Azure, or GCP lock you into proprietary APIs, services, configurations. When you try to migrate, rewrite, or simply avoid rate hikes, you hit massive friction.

From Wikipedia:

“Platform lock‑in… Data lock‑in… Tools lock‑in… migrating off a proprietary cloud platform [is] prohibitively complicated and expensive.”

On Reddit, many describe being “trapped” by their provider:

“I feel trapped with my provider and switching seems impossible.”

It’s not just theory. Teams dedicated months to migrate, only to rebuild core services in a new ecosystem.

4. Hidden risks and controls

Cloud pushes responsibility onto you. Everything from IAM misconfigurations to leaking IP addresses, multi‑tenant attacks (“cloud squatting”) and lack of transparency over data residency fall on your plate.

Cloud providers can and do share data with authorities without warrants. SLAs often exclude planned maintenance, force majeure, human error. Service credits rarely cover real outage cost.

Shared tenancy means noisy neighbors and performance variation. Outages are common, even among major providers (which we seems to be experiencing more often it seems).

5. Why build Carpathian from scratch

Carpathian is a direct response to these problems. Instead of squeezing into bloated cloud stacks, we’ve opted for control, predictability, and simplicity.

5.1 Cost predictability

We run our own infrastructure where usage patterns are predictable—storage, compute, networking. We employ efficient virtualization, open‑source orchestration, and internal tools. That shifts spend from unpredictable OpEx to controlled CapEx.

Budget‑caps and real‑time tracking are baked in. You always know your monthly run rate. No surprise bills, no weekend billing spikes.

5.2 Architectural simplicity

We define, ship, and monitor components we own without hundreds of loosely connected services. Kubernetes, minimal managed data services, unified logging, our own IAM. That removes layers of abstraction and makes root‑cause analysis straightforward.

5.3 Data sovereignty and compliance

We choose data center locations and infrastructure tailored to compliance—GDPR, HIPAA, financial services. You are not beholden to region drop‑outs, provider policies, or metadata residency issues.

5.4 No vendor lock‑in

Our architecture is portable. You can run it in your colocation environment, in any cloud, or behind a firewall. We avoid proprietary APIs. You control upgrades, migrations, and timelines.

5.5 Security and control

Your data is yours. You decide who can decrypt, who has access, where it sits. Privileges are audited and personal. No third parties, no secrets buried in service agreements.

6. Addressing common objections

“Aren’t you just doing private cloud?”
Yes. But not in the traditional sense of on‑prem lock‑in. We leverage virtualization, Kubernetes, and automated deployments, not bespoke hardware and tool sprawl.

“Isn’t it more expensive upfront?”
CapEx is higher, but total cost of ownership is lower. Our clients run tight infrastructure, avoid wasted spend, and gain stability and compliance.

“What about scaling?”
We design to autoscale with horizontal Kubernetes clusters, containerization, edge placement. We extend to public cloud for unpredictable spikes—on your terms.

7. What we’re trying to accomplish

Radical predictability: no surprise bills, no resource drain, no vendor clauses.
Architectural clarity: minimal services you understand end-to-end.
Data sovereignty and compliance by design.
Operational control: you own it, you run it, you upgrade it.
Modular extensibility: connect public cloud selectively when there’s a real ROI.

At Carpathian, we think the cloud should serve your needs. NOT extract value through complexity.

8. Why you should care

If you’ve been burned by budget overruns, undocumented dependencies, surprise outages, or locked-in infrastructure, Carpathian offers a path out.

Our model empowers teams to behave like cloud‑native engineers without vendor handcuffs. You hire ordinary ops and devs who code and deploy powerful systems with no need for deep Platform SMEs or massive services budgets.

If your systems require control, compliance, and performance, not just convenience. Carpathian is purpose-built for that gap.

9. Final thoughts

Cloud providers changed the game, but not for everyone. If cost, complexity, compliance, and lock‑in drag you down, it's time to re‑evaluate.

Carpathian started as a hard pivot away from ecosystems designed to trap you. We've embraced control through ownership, simplicity through design, and sovereignty through transparency.

We’re not against cloud: we use parts of it when it makes strategic sense. But we refuse to cede control or accept surprise costs.

Build your stack with intention. Know what you run and why. Keep it lean. And never hand over control of your architecture as collateral for convenience.

Carpathian exists to restore the balance.