Let’s get one thing straight: enterprises don’t see SaaS itself as a problem. The real issue is where it runs. They want it to operate inside their own cloud, under their own security and cost controls. And frankly, they shouldn’t be required to give up data control or burn engineering time on undifferentiated infrastructure in exchange for some speed and simplicity.
This question matters most for organizations running large-scale, regulated, or data-intensive workloads.
Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) addresses this need. It allows you to run vendor software inside your own infrastructure while still getting the benefits of a managed service. The data stays in your cloud account, under your control and security rules.
Platforms like Estuary are at the forefront of this shift by putting BYOC front and center as a first-class deployment option.
Key Takeaways
BYOC lets enterprises run vendor-managed software inside their own cloud infrastructure.
It combines SaaS simplicity with full control over data, cost, and compliance.
BYOC is especially valuable for regulated, data-intensive, and AI-driven workloads.
It is not the right fit for every team, but it becomes increasingly important at scale.
Problems with Traditional SaaS
SaaS has been the reliable solution for many years, largely due to its simple setup, lack of infrastructure management, and ability to scale without the need for a large operations team.
However, as data volumes grow, several limitations become clear:
- High and unpredictable costs at scale: Processing hundreds of terabytes through a vendor platform might seem reasonable initially, but it becomes costly at scale. In many cases, it ends up being far more expensive than running the same workloads on your own cloud infrastructure.
- Vendor lock-in is another issue: SaaS platforms typically bundle compute, storage, networking, and operations into a single environment. Once your pipelines, metadata, and processing logic live inside the vendor’s system, moving away becomes slow and costly. Your ability to leverage existing investments in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud is also limited.
- Loss of control over data and infrastructure: In the SaaS model, the vendor decides how and where your data is stored and processed. Running everything yourself does put you back in the driver’s seat, but it also adds the burden of managing and maintaining the system.
As a result, organizations are often forced to choose between convenience and control. Both traditional SaaS and fully self-managed infrastructure come with trade-offs that must be carefully evaluated.
SaaS vs BYOC vs Self-Managed Infrastructure
The differences between these approaches become clearer when you compare them side by side.
| Dimension | Traditional SaaS | BYOC | Fully Self-Managed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data location | Vendor-managed cloud | Customer’s cloud | Customer’s cloud |
| Data control | Low | High | High |
| Operational effort | Very low | Low to medium | High |
| Cost predictability | Low at scale | High | High |
| Compliance flexibility | Limited | High | High |
| Vendor lock-in | High | Low | None |
| Time to value | Fast | Fast | Slow |
What Is BYOC Actually?
Some organizations prefer fully managed SaaS, others want isolated deployments with vendor support, some require full ownership of the infrastructure. Modern platforms like Estuary accommodate all three models: a public environment for simplicity, a private setup for isolation, and BYOC for full control.
BYOC allows you to run a vendor’s software inside your own cloud environment while the vendor continues to manage the software itself. At the core of this model is a clear separation between the control plane and the data plane.
Control Plane
The control plane handles orchestration, configuration, monitoring, system health checks, and metadata storage. It also houses the user interface (UI) you interact with daily.
With a SaaS product like Estuary, the control plane is fully managed by the vendor. This includes automatic updates that deliver new features, performance improvements, and security enhancements without requiring customer intervention.
Data Plane
The data plane, by contrast, runs within your own infrastructure and performs processing, transforming, and streaming.
With a BYOC model, the data remains in-house and never reaches Estuary’s servers. This way, you get all the perks of a SaaS service without giving up control of your data.
Why BYOC Matters Right Now
There are several reasons why BYOC is increasingly being adopted by large organizations.
Cost Pressure
Organizations with long-term commitments to a cloud provider often have discounts through Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, or Committed Use Discounts. Traditional SaaS doesn’t take advantage of these, so you end up paying retail prices on top of your cloud bills.
To put this in perspective, processing 500 TB of data each month on a SaaS-based data platform priced at $0.25-$1.25 per GB is estimated to be around $125,000-$625,000 per month. Running the same workload on your own discounted compute resources that you have already purchased will reduce that cost by approximately 60%-90%.
Regulatory Compliance
Healthcare organizations cannot store patient data in shared cloud environments. Banks face strict requirements around data location, and many European companies must keep sensitive data within the EU due to GDPR With BYOC, data remains exactly where it is needed, giving organizations full control over storage and processing. This is something traditional SaaS cannot provide.
AI Demands
Model training, feature engineering, and large-scale analytics need fast, low-latency access to sensitive data. Processing data next to your datasets eliminates unnecessary copying and reduces latency.
BYOC makes this possible while keeping your data private and under organizational control.
Reliability
With BYOC, workloads run on dedicated infrastructure rather than shared, multi-tenant environments. This eliminates the risk of noisy neighbors and provides more consistent and predictable performance.
How BYOC Works in Practice
In a BYOC deployment, Estuary manages the control plane from its infrastructure. This includes operations like orchestration, metadata, updates, monitoring, and system health.
The data plane runs in your VPC. Estuary deploys and manages the runtime in your cloud account, handling updates, patches, and scaling and keeping the system operational. You choose the region, VPC, IAM configuration, and networking options, such as PrivateLink or VPC peering. Estuary works with the configurations you’ve set, while your security tools like GuardDuty and SIEM agents remain fully under your control.
As you can see, the control plane is central in Estuary, whereas all data processing takes place in your own environment. The two parts communicate through secure APIs. The control plane manages the data plane, and the data plane sends back status and metrics. However, your actual data never goes to the control plane, and the vendor cannot access it. This design ensures all data is stored locally, under your control.
Benefits of BYOC
BYOC comes with several practical benefits for organizations that need greater control over their data infrastructure.
- Reduced costs - You use the cloud resources you’ve already paid for. Additionally, by keeping the data inside your VPC, you avoid egress fees, which are typically a significant part of your total cloud spend. When you send your data from your cloud to a SaaS vendor for processing, you pay per GB. Unsurprisingly, these costs grow quickly as your data volume increases. With BYOC, processing happens within your VPC, so you bypass both list pricing and egress charges.
- Easier compliance: Since the data is located within your cloud, compliance should be less of an issue. The storage location, access, encryption, and network boundaries are all controlled by you. Thus, you’ll have fewer problems meeting the requirements of regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, DORA, and similar, since you won’t need to rely on the vendor’s restrictions.
- Faster performance: Processing is faster when it occurs closer to where the data is stored. With a hybrid cloud architecture, some data may reside on-premises, while the rest of it may be in the public cloud. BYOC allows you to perform your processing on either side of your data, regardless of where it resides. As a result, latency and network congestion are eliminated.
- Increased operational flexibility: BYOC lets you utilize multiple cloud vendors and move data between them without worrying about vendor lock-in. You can test new technologies and infrastructure approaches and enjoy a level of strategic flexibility that traditional SaaS can’t provide.
When Does BYOC Make Sense for Your Organization?
BYOC is not necessarily the best choice for every team. For some organizations, traditional SaaS may still be the simplest option. Estuary supports both approaches, allowing teams to choose the deployment model that best fits their needs.
The following factors can help determine whether BYOC is the right fit for your organization.
Regulatory Requirements
When strict regulations govern how data is processed and stored, BYOC may be the only option available to you. Some examples include healthcare organizations that deal with sensitive patient information regulated by HIPAA, pharmaceutical companies, financial institutions with very restrictive data location requirements, and government contractors obligated to process data on approved infrastructure.
Large Data Volumes
Teams that process terabytes of data each day will find that using their own infrastructure is less costly than SaaS. The tipping point will vary based on the company’s business model, how they move their data, and what they pay for cloud services. However, once it’s reached, SaaS costs typically grow much faster than the costs of running workloads on their own infrastructure.
High Performance Requirements
Real-time workloads and machine learning applications require low latency for quick data access and complex analytics. BYOC enables this by keeping applications and processing close to the data, reducing unnecessary network hops and delays.
Control and Security Needs
Some teams require total control over their environment, including encryption, zero-trust security models, and user access. BYOC provides this autonomy and eliminates long-term lock-in to the vendor’s infrastructure.
Team Capability
BYOC requires a capable infrastructure team. While Estuary manages data plane runtime inside your cloud account (updates and scaling), your team is responsible for the cloud environment around it. This refers to setting up the VPC, IAM, networking options, and broader security tools.
If your team lacks the capabilities to effectively manage all this, BYOC could slow you down.
How to Decide if BYOC Fits Your Needs
Start by reviewing your regulatory requirements. Do you have data storage rules or compliance requirements? That alone could determine whether BYOC is right for you.
Next, consider your data and financial impact. How much do you spend on your current platform, and what would it cost to use your own infrastructure? Remember to include data plane expenses and engineer time to see if BYOC is really worth your while.
Then, assess the capacity of your cloud operations team. Can your engineers manage the system, VPCs, network, scaling, and security, or would you need additional expertise? BYOC means your team is responsible for infrastructure uptime, handling updates, and troubleshooting issues. Make sure to understand these operational trade-offs and clarify what support your vendor provides.
Finally, consider your migration path. Can you move from public SaaS to BYOC without interrupting existing workflows? Does your vendor support this transition, and can it be done without data loss? How long does the process take?
With platforms like Estuary, migrations happen with zero downtime and zero data loss. As a result, you won’t face the operational nightmare that usually comes with moving critical infrastructure.
Flexibility Is the Future
BYOC is increasingly becoming a standard deployment option for modern data infrastructure.
Customers want more control without giving up the benefits of managed software, which is why many SaaS vendors now offer BYOC capabilities. For example, Estuary demonstrates how BYOC can be an integral part of the platform rather than a special case of a deployment model.
Organizations handling large volumes of data, regulated data, or demanding AI workloads may find that BYOC eliminates obstacles that could limit long-term growth. And while it may not suit every team, the key question is whether it meets your specific needs.
If your organization values cost efficiency, compliance, performance, or control, the answer is likely “Yes”.
About the author
I’m a Data Engineer who likes understanding how data moves and why things break. Always looking for answers and trying new technology and ideas on real problems. The small IT business that I operate keeps my focus on real-world issues and needs. I really enjoy writing and sharing my knowledge, especially when it helps others make sense of complex topics.
