Cloud for the Mid-Market — No Rocket Science

“Cloud? That’s Only for Big Companies.”

I hear this at least once a week. From managing directors, IT leads, sometimes even from developers. And I get where it comes from.

Google “cloud” and you’ll get AWS landing pages with enterprise pricing, Kubernetes architecture diagrams that look like nuclear reactor schematics, and case studies from Netflix and Spotify. Of course you think: That’s not for us.

But you’re wrong. Fundamentally.

What Cloud Actually Means

Forget everything you’ve heard at conferences. At its core, cloud means one thing: Someone else runs the hardware, and you pay for what you use.

That’s it. No black magic. No paradigm shift. No reason for an 18-month project with external consultants.

You have a server in the basement or at a data center today? It costs you money — whether you use it or not. It needs updates, backups, someone who gets out of bed at 3 AM when it goes down. And when you need more capacity, you order new hardware. Lead time: weeks.

In the cloud, you spin up a server in 30 seconds. Need more power? Click “resize.” Don’t need it anymore? Delete it. Done.

Why Mid-Sized Companies Hesitate

I’ve been working with mid-market companies for years. The concerns are always the same:

“It’s Not Secure”

Wrong. AWS, Azure, and Google invest billions in security. More than you could ever spend. Your server in the basement that hasn’t been patched since 2019? That’s insecure. The cloud is not — provided you configure it correctly.

And yes, “configure it correctly” is the key. But that’s true for on-premise too.

”We’ll Lose Control”

You lose control over hardware you didn’t want to touch anyway. In return, you gain control over what matters: how fast you can deploy, how fast you can scale, how fast you can respond to new requirements.

”It’ll Be Expensive”

It can be expensive — if you do it wrong. Just like on-premise is expensive if you do it wrong. The difference: in the cloud, you see every cent on the invoice. With your own data center, costs hide in power, cooling, staff, hardware depreciation, and the admin who comes in on Friday night because a RAID card is failing.

Done right, cloud is cheaper for most mid-sized companies. Not because the prices are low, but because you only pay for what you actually use.

”Our Software Won’t Run There”

If your software runs on a Linux or Windows server, it runs in the cloud. Full stop. The cloud isn’t a different universe — it’s perfectly normal servers, just in someone else’s data center.

The Pragmatic Way In

Here’s the most important sentence in this entire article: You don’t have to migrate everything at once.

The biggest trap in mid-market cloud projects is the big-bang approach. Someone draws a target architecture with everything in the cloud, then a 2-year project kicks off. That’s the surest way to burn money.

Instead: Start with a concrete problem.

Step 1: Identify the Pain Point

What annoys you the most? Some typical candidates:

Backups: Still doing manual backups to external drives? → Cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob) costs pennies per GB and is fully automated.
Email: Running your own mail server? → Get rid of it. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Seriously, nobody should be running their own mail server in 2026.
Deployment: Manually copying files to the server? → A simple CI/CD pipeline saves you hours per week.
Scaling: Black Friday brings your shop to its knees? → Auto-scaling in the cloud solves that in minutes, not weeks.

Step 2: Pick the Simplest Cloud Service

You don’t need Kubernetes, Terraform, and a multi-cloud strategy on day one. To start:

A managed database service instead of your self-hosted PostgreSQL instance. RDS on AWS, Cloud SQL on Google — backups, updates, and failover included.
A simple app hosting service like AWS App Runner, Google Cloud Run, or Azure Container Apps. Upload a container, it runs. No cluster management needed.
Cloud storage for files, backups, logs. Virtually infinite, virtually indestructible, virtually free.

# Deployment can be this simple:
# 1. Write a Dockerfile (10 lines)
# 2. Build the image
docker build -t my-app .

# 3. Push to a cloud registry
docker push ecr.aws/my-company/my-app:latest

# 4. Service updates automatically
# Done. No SSH, no FTP, no "just hopping on the server real quick"

Step 3: Learn and Iterate

After your first service is in the cloud, you’ll realize: it’s not that bad. You learn the basics, your team builds competence, and the next service gets easier.

That’s the way. Not the master plan on 200 slides, but one service at a time, one problem at a time.

What You Actually Need

Let me be honest: you don’t need a cloud architect at €1,800 a day. You need:

Someone who’s done it before. Not someone who writes you a concept, but someone who migrates the first service with you. Hands-on.
A team that’s on board. Cloud isn’t an infrastructure topic — it’s a team topic. Your developers need to understand how deployments work. Your admins need to start thinking in Infrastructure as Code.
Patience. The first service takes longer than expected. The second takes half as long. The third is routine.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Migrating everything at once. Said it already, saying it again. Don’t.
Going with the cheapest provider. Hetzner Cloud is great for many things. But if you need managed services that take work off your plate, AWS/Azure/Google are often the better choice — even if the sticker price is higher.
Ignoring security. “We’ll deal with that later” is the sentence that leads to data breaches. IAM, encryption, and network isolation are mandatory from day one.
Not setting a cost limit. In the cloud, you can theoretically spend infinite money. Set a budget alert at 80% of your limit. On day one.

The First Step

If you’ve read this far, you’re ready. Not for a cloud transformation, not for a digitization strategy — for the first step.

Take an hour. Look at which of your services causes the most pain. Then ask yourself: Could this be simpler in the cloud?

The answer is almost always: yes.

And if you’re not sure where to start — that’s what people like us are here for. No slide deck, no concept paper. We look at what you have and show you the shortest path to your first win.

Cloud isn’t rocket science. It’s a craft. And crafts can be learned.