Our CEO Todd Robinson recently joined The Cloudcast podcast to discuss the resurgence of bare metal and private cloud solutions. Here are some of the key takeaways from a conversation that’s capturing attention across the industry.

 

The cloud landscape is shifting, and infrastructure leaders are taking notice. In a recent episode of The Cloudcast, OpenMetal’s founder and president Todd Robinson sat down with hosts Aaron Delp and Brian Gracely to explore why bare metal and private cloud are experiencing a comeback.

What’s Driving the Shift

Several converging factors are creating what Todd calls “a perfect storm” for bare metal adoption:

The Steady State Reality Check

Companies that went all-in on public cloud are now facing a hard truth: many workloads don’t actually need infinite scalability. As Todd explained, “I’m looking at my AWS bill and I go from, you know, $95,000 a month to a hundred and to 95 to a hundred to 95 to a hundred. You’re not going 95 to zero. So now your problem really is $95,000 a month.” When your AWS bill consistently hovers around the same amount month after month, you’re essentially paying a premium for scaling capabilities you’re not using.

The Broadcom VMware Shake-Up

The VMware licensing changes under Broadcom have created an unexpected catalyst. Organizations halfway through their renewal cycles are getting bills that are 2x to 5x higher for the same functionality. As Todd noted, many are asking themselves: “Am I getting 5x value? No, you’re getting the same thing.”

AI and Big Data Workloads

Modern applications like large-scale ClickHouse clusters, Hadoop deployments, and Kafka workloads are naturally suited for bare metal. These systems are resilient and self-managing, offering the high availability that companies traditionally depended on cloud providers to deliver.

The Economics Have Flipped

One of the most compelling points from the conversation was about unit economics. Todd highlighted a frustrating reality for many companies, SaaS in particular: “You scale and it gets more expensive.” Instead of achieving the expected economies of scale, many organizations find their cloud costs growing faster than their revenue.

For companies paying 40% of their top-line revenue to cloud providers without seeing incremental benefits as they grow, the math simply doesn’t add up. This is why we’re seeing more C-suite executives finally saying “that’s it” and demanding alternatives.

Cloud Native Ease Without Cloud Native Costs

Here’s what makes today’s bare metal different from the infrastructure of the past: you don’t have to sacrifice the automation and self-service capabilities you’ve grown accustomed to.

Modern private cloud solutions built on mature open source technologies like OpenStack and Ceph deliver the same API-first, cloud-native experience. If your team is already using Terraform or OpenTofu to manage infrastructure, you can simply point those same scripts at a private cloud environment. You can now get the benefits of bare metal and private cloud without the need to buy, manage, troubleshoot, or replace hardware yourself, and with on-demand scaling capabilities as well, just like public cloud.

The Hybrid Approach as a Best of Both Worlds

Interestingly, Todd mentioned that many large organizations aren’t going all-or-nothing. Instead, they’re adopting a strategic hybrid approach:

  • Use private cloud for steady-state workloads (often 70% of their infrastructure)
  • Maintain public cloud presence for truly variable or experimental workloads (30%)
  • Leverage the private cloud provider’s expertise for development, learning, and education

This approach allows companies to optimize costs while maintaining the flexibility to scale when truly needed.

Starting the Migration: A Practical Roadmap

For organizations considering the move, Todd outlined a practical migration strategy:

  1. Start with Development Environments: These are typically more portable and don’t have the same uptime requirements as production systems.
  2. Look for “Bang for the Buck” Workloads: Target applications you pay for constantly but rarely use at full capacity.
  3. Leverage Infrastructure as Code: If you’re already managing infrastructure with code, migration is often just a matter of pointing to a different API endpoint.
  4. Plan in Tranches: Nobody moves a petabyte overnight. Scale your private cloud incrementally as you migrate workloads.

Beyond the Private Cloud StigmaPrivate Cloud vs Public Cloud Costs Chart

The conversation also addressed the lingering stigma around “private cloud”. Todd emphasized that modern private cloud solutions are fundamentally different from the rigid, monolithic systems of the past. Today’s private cloud scales up and down dynamically and is organized into virtual private clouds just like any public cloud provider.

The key difference? You’re paying at the hardware level, not the VM level. When resources aren’t being used by one application, they’re immediately available to others in your environment.

The Bottom Line

As Todd put it, the fundamental value proposition has shifted. The “special sauce” of easy, API-driven infrastructure management is no longer special, it’s table stakes. What matters now is getting that same ease of use without paying a premium for capabilities you don’t need.

For organizations with steady-state workloads, predictable usage patterns, or large-scale data processing needs, bare metal and private cloud aren’t just alternatives, they’re often the more logical choice.


Ready to explore how bare metal could work for your organization? Listen to the full Cloudcast episode for deeper insights into the technical details and real-world case studies, or reach out to learn more about OpenMetal’s on-demand private cloud and bare metal solutions.

Want to hear more? Listen to the complete episode of The Cloudcast featuring Todd Robinson.

Interested in OpenMetal’s Hosted Private Cloud and Bare Metal Solutions?

Chat With Our Team

We’re available to answer questions and provide information.

Chat With Us

Schedule a Consultation

Get a deeper assessment and discuss your unique requirements.

Schedule Consultation

Try It Out

Take a peek under the hood of our cloud platform or launch a trial.

Trial Options

 

 

 Read More on the OpenMetal Blog

How to Build a Resilient Validator Cluster with Bare Metal and Private Cloud

Oct 16, 2025

Design fault-tolerant validator infrastructure combining dedicated bare metal performance, redundant networking, self-healing Ceph storage, and OpenStack orchestration for maintaining consensus uptime through failures.

Scaling Your OpenMetal Private Cloud from Proof of Concept to Production

Oct 15, 2025

Discover how to transition your OpenMetal private cloud from proof of concept to production. Learn expansion strategies using converged nodes, compute resources, storage clusters, and GPU acceleration for real-world workloads at scale.

How PE Firms Can Evaluate Cloud Infrastructure During Technical Due Diligence

Oct 14, 2025

Cloud infrastructure often represents one of the largest—and least understood—expenses during technical diligence. Learn what to evaluate, which red flags to watch for, and how transparent infrastructure platforms simplify the assessment process for PE firms evaluating SaaS acquisitions.

From Hot to Cold: How OpenMetal’s Storage Servers Meet Every Storage Need

Oct 14, 2025

Discover how OpenMetal’s storage servers solve the hot-to-cold storage challenge with hybrid NVMe and HDD architectures powered by Ceph. Get enterprise-grade block, file, and object storage in one unified platform with transparent pricing — no egress fees, no vendor lock-in, and full control over your private cloud storage infrastructure.

Confidential Computing as Regulators Tighten Cross-Border Data Transfer Rules

Oct 10, 2025

Cross-border data transfer regulations are tightening globally. Confidential computing provides enterprises with verifiable, hardware-backed protection for sensitive workloads during processing. Learn how CTOs and CISOs use Intel TDX, regional infrastructure, and isolated networking to meet GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS requirements.

Why Blockchain Validators Are Moving from Public Cloud to Bare Metal

Oct 09, 2025

Blockchain validators demand millisecond precision and unthrottled performance. Public cloud throttling, unpredictable costs, and resource sharing are driving operators to bare metal infrastructure. Learn why dedicated hardware with isolated networking eliminates the risks that shared environments create.

Big Data for Fraud Detection: A Guide for Financial Services and E-commerce

Oct 09, 2025

Discover how big data analytics combined with dedicated bare metal infrastructure enables real-time fraud detection systems that analyze millions of transactions with sub-100ms latencies, eliminating the performance variability and unpredictable costs of public clouds while achieving 30-60% infrastructure savings.

How to Build a High-Performance Time-Series Database on OpenMetal

Oct 08, 2025

Discover how to build production-grade time-series databases on OpenMetal’s dedicated bare metal infrastructure. This comprehensive guide covers time-series fundamentals, popular open-source options like ClickHouse and TimescaleDB, and provides a detailed deployment blueprint with infrastructure optimization strategies.

Fixed-Cost Infrastructure: Why PE Firms Prefer Predictable Capex Over Variable Cloud Spend

Oct 07, 2025

Private equity firms are replacing variable cloud costs with fixed-cost infrastructure to improve EBITDA predictability and portfolio valuations. Learn how transparent, hardware-based pricing creates financial advantages for PE-backed SaaS companies.

Optimizing Latency and Egress Costs for Globally Distributed Workloads

Oct 07, 2025

Discover how OpenMetal’s strategically positioned data centers eliminate the “data tax” on globally distributed applications. Free east-west traffic between regions plus predictable 95th percentile bandwidth billing lets you architect for performance instead of cost avoidance, with typical savings of 30-60% versus public cloud.