The paradox
The cloud data platforms that promised lower TCO are now the line items keeping CFOs awake. The ease of scale that made delivery faster is the same property that makes spend run away.
Where the spend leaks
- Pipelines built for correctness but not for cost.
- Compute left running because no one owns shutdown.
- Datasets duplicated across environments because cleanup is no one’s job.
What good looks like
Cost discipline as a delivery acceptance criterion, not a quarterly clean-up. A platform team that can answer “what does this query cost?” in seconds, not weeks.