Every major strategic initiative enterprises are chasing in 2025 — global scale, digital customer experience, and AI, AI, AI — has one critical element dictating success or failure: infrastructure. More precisely, how strategically we cloud leaders manage our cloud infrastructure.
Unfortunately, most parts of most enterprises still see “infra” like plumbing — something to maintain, not something to wield for competitive advantage. That mindset is about to become a severe liability. New realities are forcing cloud teams everywhere to choose: adapt and embrace a strategic approach to infrastructure, stay reactive, and watch as critical initiatives fail and competitors leap ahead.
This piece was originally published the New Stacks
The infrastructure Revolution Is Almost Here
Over the past decade, infrastructure — once a static collection of servers, resources, and governance processes — has been radically reshaped by the “Infrastructure Delivery Revolution.” Just as the Software Delivery Revolution twenty years ago transformed how we built and managed software, this new revolution is turning infrastructure into code, adding an automation layer, and simplifying governance — all to make delivery as fast, efficient, and stable as software. At least that’s the promise.
The reality? Most of us are stuck in the middle, running some or all of our cloud infrastructure as code but relying on a patchwork of outdated workflows, incomplete automation, and ballooning complexity. I see this whenever I run an IaC coverage report: less than 50% of a typical enterprise’s infrastructure is managed by IaC. Until now, that’s been “good enough” — barely.
As cloud migration accelerates and multi-cloud sprawl takes hold, we face an ever-expanding maze of governance, security, and compliance requirements that outpace our ability to maintain control. This has led to bottlenecks that stall innovation, soaring costs, security failures, compliance fines, and unmet SLAs. It all adds up to a fragile infrastructure foundation unlikely to support the critical initiatives our organizations are betting on.
And that was before AI…
AI Is a Force Multiplier for Chaos
Every team inside our organizations — R&D, engineering, security, operations, customer support, marketing, finance, product — is leaning hard into AI to automate, optimize, and scale their functions. But
AI isn’t just another workload — it exponentially increases demand on infrastructure:
- More compute power — AI training and inference workloads require significantly more resources.
- More real-time data processing — AI models operate at scale, increasing cloud spend and governance complexity.
- More security & compliance risk — AI relies on massive datasets, introducing new compliance and attack vectors.
- More software to deliver — AI allows R&D to build software and products faster, and it all needs more infrastructure scale and speed to run.
Those of us leading cloud teams — already stretched thin by insufficient security, governance, and automation tools — now face a tidal wave of AI-driven workloads. Infrastructure that was “good enough” before is a massive liability today.
Let’s state it clearly: our organizations will only capture the benefits of AI’s breakneck expansion when our cloud infrastructure scales to meet new demands. Reaching milestones like 50% faster R&D or 50% more efficient customer support also requires 50% faster DevOps. The question isn’t whether AI will transform our businesses — it’s whether our infrastructure will allow it to.
So, what to do?
The Shift to Strategic Infrastructure
For our organizations to win and execute critical initiatives well, we must move from reactive infrastructure to strategic infrastructure, leveraging infrastructure for all its worth as a market advantage. We need a new framework that aligns cloud infrastructure with the business velocity, innovation, and resilience required to succeed.
There are three fundamental shifts required to embrace Strategic Infrastructure — transitions I’ve experienced firsthand and want to share with fellow practitioners. The first shift? We can make it right now.
Shift One: Changing the Mindset
It doesn’t matter if you’re working with the CIO, CISO, CSO, or CEO — we need to advocate for infrastructure as a strategic weapon, not a cost center. The shift is rolling downhill.
Traditionally, infrastructure delivery has been seen as a technical concern — something for IT to handle, for engineers to solve. That thinking is outdated and will leave our organizations further behind.
Enterprises have already made one leap when we all moved to the cloud — I experienced firsthand a complete transformation of how teams operated and measured success. A second leap must be made now, and it’s already begun. The teams I see scaling effectively now have already made the change.
We must communicate that every bet our companies make — AI, digital transformation, customer experience — rests on world-class infrastructure. If that’s weak, it all collapses.
How to Act: Own Infrastructure Like You Own Growth
The fastest-growing, most resilient companies treat infrastructure as a strategic asset. That means:
- Align infrastructure decisions with business velocity. Slow, bureaucratic processes kill momentum. Powerful, end-to-end automation accelerates it.
- Empower cloud teams, but don’t overburden them. If we’re stuck firefighting, the business is stuck, too. We need tools for total infrastructure control so we can build the future instead of fixing the past.
- Invest in infrastructure like it’s a core product. Don’t just optimize costs — aggressively engineer for scale, automation, and governance from day one.
What to Ask: The Hard Questions
Right now, we should be asking:
- Do we treat infrastructure as a force multiplier or a cost center?
- Is our organization structured to make infrastructure a strategic priority?
- Does our infrastructure investment match its impact on our business?
- Are we ready to scale alongside AI-driven acceleration?
Nothing changes if nothing changes — at the top. A mindset shift is a critical first step, but it’s not the hardest. That’s what comes next.
Shift Two: Regaining Control of the Cloud
Today’s enterprise infrastructure isn’t just expanding; it’s unraveling. Multi-cloud sprawl, fragmented automation, invisible security risks, and hard-to-meet resilience requirements have all made infrastructure delivery nearly impossible to govern. Every Director of DevOps or VP of Infra I talk to is seeing the same thing.
The only way out is total control. Leading teams don’t just manage cloud complexity — they engineer for control, which means building it right and not fixing it later.
How to Act: Automate, Govern, and See Everything
- Define a clear North Star for cloud infrastructure. We’ll never get there if our teams don’t understand our desired configuration — what “good” looks like.
- Eliminate bottlenecks with automation. From provisioning to security to compliance, intelligent end-to-end automation reduces or eliminates unnecessary organizational friction.
- Implement autonomous governance. We can drive business velocity without sacrificing control by empowering teams who need infrastructure to spin it up themselves, with guardrails.
What to Ask: The Hard Questions
Right now, we should ask:
- What are our biggest infrastructure bottlenecks and friction points — and why aren’t they automated?
- Are we running our cloud — or is it running us?
- Do we have complete cloud infrastructure visibility and control, or are we flying blind?
Regaining control of the cloud is a turning point — but controlling isn’t winning (yet). The third and final shift locks in Strategic Infrastructure: Engineering a team that moves faster than the organization it powers.
Shift Three: Building ‘Team Infrastructure’
Better technology alone won’t define the winners of the Infrastructure Delivery Revolution — how we work will. Who owns infrastructure, how teams collaborate, and whether our culture is aligned around operational excellence are just as critical as platforms and tools. The next frontier isn’t only cloud tech — it’s cloud teamwork, too.
The best infrastructure engineers don’t want to fight bureaucracy or plug holes in legacy systems — they want to solve big problems, control at scale, and push the boundaries of what’s possible. Organizations that position their cloud teams as frontline innovators won’t just move faster — they’ll attract and retain the kind of world-class talent required to build Strategic Infrastructure.
Having built teams for twenty years, I can confidently say that the quality of teams — groups that work effectively in frictionless harmony — is far more important than their size. Scaled teams won’t solve an infrastructure scaling problem.
How to Act: Build Teams That Build the Future
- Break the silos. Cloud, security, and engineering teams can’t work in isolation — collaboration must be engineered, not expected. Make that a key cultural value.
- Raise the operational bar by treating infrastructure like a core enterprise product — designed, measured, and continuously optimized — so teams operate instead of chaos.
- Make infrastructure a mission. The best engineers don’t just want jobs — they want impact. Give them autonomy, automation, and control, then track progress. You’ll be glad you did.
What to Ask: The Hard Questions
We should all be asking:
- Are we creating an environment where top cloud talent wants to build and stay, or one that limits their impact?
- Have we empowered our infrastructure teams to drive business velocity or keep systems running?
- Have we positioned infrastructure as a product of the enterprise, or are we leaving teams to navigate themselves?
How do you measure the risk of not taking action? In decades.
The Software Delivery Revolution reshaped industries over twenty years ago. The Infrastructure Delivery Revolution is happening much faster, and its winners and losers are already being sorted.
Organizations that lean hard into Strategic Infrastructure are building their future now, creating the velocity, resilience, and innovation required to power business-defining initiatives for the next decade. And they’re doing it with cloud teams empowered to execute at a world-class level — without roadblocks, friction, and limitations. Organizations that wait to shift will still fix foundational infrastructure issues when AI’s workload drowns their most critical initiatives.
The AI wave, the acceleration of digital transformation, and aggressive global expansion aren’t just challenges to manage. They’re signals to get started finally; now, this year, 2025.
At least now we know where to begin. And remember, the first shift starts with us.
