Cloud computing promised infinite elasticity. What it delivered was companies discovering their limits during production outages and receiving surprise infrastructure bills. Capacity planning did not become obsolete. It became invisible.

CodeGood

Cloud computing promised to eliminate capacity planning through infinite elasticity, but instead made it invisible. Organizations now discover their infrastructure limits through production outages and surprise bills rather than proactive planning. Modern capacity planning remains essential but must adapt to cloud characteristics: establishing baselines through load testing, modeling growth patterns, and understanding architectural scaling limits. The cost of avoiding this discipline—wasted infrastructure spending and crisis-driven failures—consistently exceeds the investment in systematic capacity understanding. Mature companies eventually rediscover capacity planning after expensive lessons, while those who maintain the discipline proactively avoid the characteristic pattern of discovering limits during critical moments.

The Death of Capacity Planning, CodeGood

The Infrastructure Bill as Feedback Mechanism

The Economics of Prevention versus Crisis