Kubernetes is not the answer to every workload. But where it fits, it fits beautifully — and the operating cost is dramatically lower than five years ago thanks to managed offerings.
When Kubernetes is the right choice
- You run more than ten production services.
- You need rapid horizontal scaling for compute-heavy workloads.
- Your team is comfortable with declarative infrastructure.
When it is not
- You have one or two workloads. App Runner, ECS, or Cloud Run will serve you better.
- You do not have a dedicated platform engineer.
What we standardize on
Managed control planes (EKS, AKS, GKE), GitOps via Argo CD, observability via OpenTelemetry, and a paved-road internal developer platform so application teams never touch raw YAML.
About the author. This article was written by the consulting team at Algorithm, Inc, a U.S.-based software development and digital transformation firm headquartered in Dublin, Ohio. To discuss how these ideas apply to your environment, contact us.