Did You Choose Cloud for the Wrong Reason?

You approved a migration because it was supposed to be cheaper, simpler, or more secure. Nobody actually checked whether this specific workload needed any of that. Eighteen months later you’re the one explaining why the bill went up instead of down.

Jeremy Pease, CEO of Aptum, has spent his career on the side of the table deciding what infrastructure to build next. He and Max Clark get into where these decisions actually break, connectivity costs that quietly beat compute costs, workloads that never needed to scale the way the business case assumed, and a colocation deal that looked like ten thousand dollars a month until it became eighty. They also get into the real savings number most providers won’t say out loud, and why repatriation became real for companies that trusted the wrong assumption.

Know what to check before your next migration, renewal, or repatriation call. Read the full test: https://www.itbroker.com/blog/cloud-workload-assessment

Find your situation

• You already have an infrastructure decision in mind, and the quote seemed reasonable, but nobody has checked it against your actual team size and budget yet. Jump to 1:35:04
• Finance keeps asking you to find savings, and you’ve never actually run the real number on where your workloads are sitting. Jump to 51:32
• Your connectivity bill costs more than your infrastructure bill, and nobody on your team has flagged it yet. Jump to 28:00
• You’re the one in the room trying to explain “it depends” to a board that wants a single clean answer. Jump to 1:07:29
• You’re repatriation curious, but you’ve never actually modeled what moving back would take. Jump to 29:32

What we get into

• 00:00 — A customer was sure about colocation. Then Jeremy told them the real number.
• 01:38 — Why the infrastructure decision flipped: the application decides now, not the platform
• 03:33 — The real question before any platform decision
• 04:16 — The myths: cloud isn’t automatically secure, compliant, or cheaper
• 27:13 — Why connectivity can cost more than the infrastructure itself
• 29:32 — Netflix, Dropbox, and why repatriation became real
• 48:11 — Cloud as the ultimate expression of tech debt
• 51:32 — The real savings number nobody wants to say out loud
• 1:07:29 — Why staying agnostic is a hard sell in the boardroom
• 1:34:19 — The colocation customer, and what the real number actually was

What we mentioned

• Aptum
• Digital Realty
• Equinix
• Netflix
• Dropbox

About Jeremy Pease

Jeremy Pease is CEO of Aptum, a global hybrid multi-cloud managed service provider, appointed to the role in May 2026 after previously serving as the company’s COO. He has more than two decades of experience running data center and cloud infrastructure businesses, including CEO roles at Hivelocity and Colohouse, and has spent his career on the side of the table deciding what to build next, then explaining why the answer isn’t always the one the customer walked in wanting.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-pease-a53b972/ Company: aptum.com

About Signed

Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who’ve lived inside real enterprise tech deals. New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.

If you’re in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com. Buy tech without regret.