--- title: "Build or Buy Considerations for Development Environments" description: "These are the top considerations before you set out on a journey to build your own development environments." url: "https://www.okteto.com/build-versus-buy/" source: "https://www.okteto.com" --- # Build or Buy a Cloud Development Environment? # Webinar: Replicated's Development Journey Building an in-house cloud development environment might, at first, seem like a good idea. But building means you’re now responsible for future development investments, ongoing research, compliance, maintenance, bug fixes, platform updates, and support. Marc Campbell, CTO and Founder of Replicated explains their considerations and challenges when it comes to building in-house solutions. Below are four categories of consideration that will help you make your decision - [Features and Functionality](#features-and-functionality) - [Performance and Maintenance](#performance-and-maintenance) - [Resource Allocation](#resource-allocation) - [Opportunity Cost and ROI](#opportunity-cost-and-roi) ## **Thinking of building a dev environment?** #### **Some product points to consider:** - Is your feature roadmap comparable to what you get out of the box with Okteto? - Can non-engineering teams provide feedback and collaborate? - Does your solution mirror production with digital twin accuracy? - Do you have capability to support pair-programming across multiple services? - Are you able to provide easy access to Kubernetes? - Can you provide pull requests with shareable preview URLs? - Will you be able to provide repeatable and reliable workflows? - Is your solution secure enough to support SOCII or ISO27001 security? - Can you effectively protect PII? - Can your solution cross borders for GDPR compliance? > We tried to build it in-house, but that failed. Companies don't understand the complexity of what's under the hood when building their cloud dev environments, such as the custom resource definitions and technical design needed to work with Kubernetes. > > \- from a leading healthcare provider ## You Built it - You Own It Building an in-house cloud development environment might seem at first like an intelligent business decision. A homegrown solution allows teams to own the specs and control releases to meet their team’s unique requirements. But building means your team is now responsible for future development investments, ongoing research, compliance, maintenance, bug fixes, platform updates, and support. All of this is a costly and time consuming distraction from your core business. #### **Why You Should Buy: Superior Features** Built by cloud developers for cloud developers, Okteto offers a depth and breadth of out-of-the-box features that allow today’s developers to create microservices for cloud applications. Okteto’s cloud development environment has been battle tested with a feature set defined by requests from some of the most innovative development organizations in the world. And many of these powerful features might have never been considered by development organizations with a homegrown system. Okteto is built with pre-configured development images for the following languages: dotnetcore, golang, java, node, php, python, ruby and rust. Additionally, Okteto works with existing Helm charts, docker-compose, or Kubernetes manifests. At the end of the day, you have to ask if your homegrown development is robust enough to simplify the adoption of kubernetes, provide enterprise-ready security, support namespaces, mirror production and scale as technology evolves. If not, then buying is the right business decision. ## **Thinking of building a dev environment?** #### **Some performance points to consider:** - Can you provide ongoing bug fixes, maintenance, and platform updates at scale? - Can you test code before merging? - Can your solution manage multiple microservices in parallel? - Is it easy for both Kubernetes pros and newbies to collaborate? - Does your solution allow developers to use their favorite dev tools? - Are your developers and services required to manage ETCD, coreDNS, CNI and Docker in their environment? - Can you troubleshoot issues globally across namespaces and shared environments? - Can your solution enable you to set up a tech stack reliably in one single click? - Can you manage multiple moving parts, such as IDEs, Docker, code repos, and endless tooling options? - Can you connect to another developer's branch on its local frontend without spinning up that instance? > Our homegrown solution took a massive investment of our engineering to keep Kubernetes, Docker, and all kinds of cutting edge technologies updated and supported. It was difficult, taking our engineers’ time to support because every day something was broken. > > Marc CampbellCTO & Co-Founder, Replicated > > ![Marc Campbell](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/6icyfeiq/production/6b8bd258cf660df1894613f920bdf3aaef512e5b-306x306.jpg?w=88&h=88&q=75&fit=max&auto=format) ## Can Your Solution Scale? If you've built your cloud development environment, you could argue that you have an in-house team that knows your solution inside and out; therefore, performance maintenance should be easy. But what happens when your homegrown mastermind walks out the door with that domain knowledge? And what happens when your environment needs to scale to support emerging standards and evolve to address new upgrades to complex technologies, such as Kubernetes? Slowly propagated platform updates and poorly designed resiliency of your homegrown environment cause unacceptable downtime when issues occur. And seemingly innocuous updates can reveal security gaps and business logic data bugs. These issues slow your teams down, negatively impact developer experience and performance, and put the delivery of value at risk. #### **Why You Should Buy: Reliability** Oketo keeps up with maintenance and regular updates for new features and functionality to provide unparalleled speed, reliability and scalability. Okteto's first-class architecture offers several layers of redundancy and ensures consistency and enterprise-ready security with every update. The Oketo platform is flexible, secure, and designed to offer performance at scale whether you're developing simple internal apps or complex global apps with hundreds of microservices. In contrast, homegrown solutions and the teams that support them  can quickly be overwhelmed by the requirements necessary of your product teams. Okteto ensures your development environment works with current standards so your development team can design the cloud applications that will change the world. ## **Thinking of building a dev environment?** #### **Some resource points to consider:** - Do you have the bandwidth and budget to fix issues at scale when they break this year, next year and going forward? - Can you replace your homegrown environment developers if they take their expertise and walk out the door? - How much money are you wasting having your developers deal daily with homegrown-related administrative issues? - How much resources and budget can you dedicate to cloud-centric DevOps, Infrastructure Provisioning, and CI/CD QA? - How much time and resources are needed to increase collaboration with the DevOps teams even more to make sure the end-to-end platform executes? > We spent 12 months building our preview environment system ourselves, but it was never as good as we wanted. We didn't have the bandwidth to manage or maintain it, and it was distracting us from our primary engineering needs. > > John CraftCTO & Co-Founder, Privacy Dynamics > > ![John Craft](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/6icyfeiq/production/f788897ce6a8e88d9bdcb22d0e348e6a4fe9a901-553x553.jpg?w=88&h=88&q=75&fit=max&auto=format) ## Free Your Engineers to Drive Value The total cost of ownership (TCO) is often overlooked when development teams choose to build a development environment internally. Here's the rule: if your engineers spend time on a weekly basis dealing with development environment maintenance issues, then they are not focused on innovating and developing revenue-generating application features. Simply put: building an in-house development platform is resource expensive and time-consuming…and the results are often disappointing. #### **Why You Should Buy: Support and Expertise** Okteto provides a support team with years of cloud development and kubernetes experience by your side. Okteto draws on its expertise to solve complex problems, develop comprehensive solutions, proactively address security issues, and predict usage needs and patterns to benefit your business and meet the cross-functional needs of entire stakeholders. As a result, your team that was burdened with the responsibilities of maintaining your development environment can now focus on what they do best - developing killer applications. ## **Thinking of building a dev environment?** #### **Some cost points to consider:** - Is building homegrown software a constraint to develop, qa, implement and roll-out core features to grow your business? - What is the opportunity cost of using your developers to maintain a homegrown solution instead of delivering value? - What’s the shortest time to value: homegrown dev environments or building core application features? - What’s the cost of a potential security breach to your company? - How much time and money is lost due to onboarding delays? - What’s the cost to bring in consultants to help troubleshoot your homegrown solution’s security vulnerabilities and Kubernetes-related updates? > As you think about building your own platform consider this: It took an entire dedicated team of engineers a year to build the first version of Okteto. This represents around 1MM in payroll expenses to get the platform up and running. Throw in a few other priorities and distractions, and you’re easily looking at 2X that. > > Ramiro BerrellezaCEO & Co-founder, Okteto > > ![Ramiro Berrelleza](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/6icyfeiq/production/67ef91355b6b2c1650e4fb3b02bee9d128dbaf22-320x320.jpg?w=88&h=88&q=75&fit=max&auto=format) ## Building Has Many Unforeseen Costs Let's face it: at the end of the day, the argument for building versus buying always comes down to ROI. If you build, you bear the entire cost burden of homegrown software. That includes paying for the initial buildout, ongoing support, bug fixes, upgrades, platform migrations, and keeping up with software industry trends. These costs can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions. #### **Why You Should Buy: Money** Okteto has increased productivity by 200% for Replicated, reduced bugs and late-stage defects by 80% for Homa Games, and lowering scrap and rework by 50% for monday.com. But perhaps the most significant ROI for a cloud development platform environment solution is providing a positive developer experience. Removing the burden of maintaining a hosted solution allows engineers to focus on driving value for the organization. Okteto owns all costs associated with building and maintenance while continuously gaining efficiencies across a large customer base, reducing the cost to customers. Ask yourself: what’s the value of a positive developer experience and what’s the potential risk and cost of a migration mishap, security breach, prolonged delays, and scrap and rework caused by a homegrown solution? ## Further reading ## [5 Internal Software Development Platform Challenges](https://www.okteto.com/blog/5-internal-software-development-platform-challenges/) Some of the smartest engineering and DevOps managers sometimes make the mistake of treating a new software initiative as a single, well-defined one-off... ![Avatar of John Papageorge](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/6icyfeiq/production/bb39a95e947961656deec849956675c9c183a1ba-300x300.jpg?w=24&h=24&q=75&fit=max&auto=format)John Papageorge ## [The Cost and Complications of In-House Development Environments](https://www.okteto.com/blog/the-cost-and-complications-of-in-house-development-environments/) "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson. The importance of tools that boost a positive developer experience can't be overstated.... ![Avatar of John Papageorge](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/6icyfeiq/production/bb39a95e947961656deec849956675c9c183a1ba-300x300.jpg?w=24&h=24&q=75&fit=max&auto=format)John Papageorge ## Interested in transforming your microservice development environments? We’re here to help. Let’s discuss your needs and challenges. [Start for Free](https://www.okteto.com/try-free/) [Talk to an expert today](https://www.okteto.com/contact/)