Public Cloud Strategy: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!

Avoiding the “Hotel California” Trap in Your Cloud Strategy

With all due respect to the Eagles, your public cloud strategy should not resemble the lyrics from Hotel California. And yet, for many early adopters, that haunting refrain—“you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”—has become a painfully familiar reality.

In the early days of cloud adoption, the allure of public cloud was irresistible. Low upfront costs, rapid deployment, and seemingly limitless scalability were exactly what businesses needed to innovate fast. Applications were built and deployed with minimal concern for long-term implications. But as those applications became mission-critical and usage scaled, the true cost of cloud became increasingly difficult to ignore—particularly when businesses attempted to move workloads out or repatriate them into their own data centers.

The Real Costs Lurk Beneath the Surface

What once appeared to be a cost-effective solution quickly turned into a financial anchor. Egress fees, data transfer penalties, and architectural lock-in made migration or repatriation complex and expensive. In many cases, organizations found themselves tethered to their cloud provider with few practical alternatives—caught in a cycle of rising costs and limited flexibility.

And yet, despite these cautionary tales, many organizations continue to fall for the same trap. The appeal of attractive pricing models—especially for storage—makes it easy to overlook the long-term implications.

Enter: Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS)

A new generation of cloud offerings is now rising in popularity, particularly Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) solutions. At first glance, these offerings promise affordable, scalable storage for backups, archives, and cold data. But there’s a catch: while the cost to store data is minimal, the cost to retrieve that data is anything but.

Organizations are starting to discover that when they actually need to access their information—whether for compliance, recovery, or analytics—the fees to retrieve that data can far exceed expectations. It’s the digital equivalent of being handed a five-star minibar menu without the prices listed. You’ll enjoy the convenience now—and pay the premium later.

Build a Cloud Strategy That Goes Beyond Entry Costs

To avoid becoming the next guest in the “Hotel California” of cloud, it’s critical to take a more holistic and long-term view of your cloud strategy. That means asking:

• What will it cost to move data into this environment—and what will it cost to move it out?

• Are you architecting for portability, or are you locking yourself into a single provider’s ecosystem?

• Have you modeled your total cost of ownership (TCO) across a multi-year timeline, including data egress and retrieval fees?

• Do your STaaS solutions provide transparency and predictability, or are they a cost surprise waiting to happen?

Conclusion: Know the True Price of Convenience

Cloud services, like hotel amenities, can be luxurious and necessary—but without a clear exit plan, they can also become a trap. As your cloud infrastructure evolves, make sure you’re planning not only for ease of entry, but for cost-effective growth, flexibility, and, if needed, an exit.

Otherwise, you just might end up living out the lyrics of one of the greatest rock songs of all time—stuck in a place you never meant to stay.