A business owner came to us feeling boxed in by their software stack. On paper, everything worked. They were using QuickBooks, a hosted file service, a third-party email provider, and a handful of add-ons to fill the gaps. Nothing was broken, but nothing felt integrated either.
The annual cost was adding up quietly.
By the time subscriptions, user licenses, and support fees were tallied, they were spending a little over five thousand dollars a year just to keep the system running. And even then, they still felt limited. Reporting was fragmented. Data lived in multiple places. And most importantly, they didn’t actually own any of it.
If they ever left a platform, access would go with it.
What they wanted wasn’t flashy software. They wanted control, visibility, and a system that could grow with them instead of charging more every year just to stand still.
That’s when we started talking about infrastructure instead of apps.
Rather than stacking more subscriptions, we helped them transition to a self-hosted ERP built on Odoo. The system was configured specifically for how their business operated, not how a generic platform assumed it should. Accounting, invoicing, project tracking, and reporting all lived in one place.
Instead of renting servers in the cloud with variable costs, their ERP was hosted on dedicated hardware. The server was colocated in a controlled facility, giving them enterprise-grade uptime without enterprise pricing.
The numbers surprised them.
Between hardware amortization, colocation, backups, and maintenance, their total annual cost landed just under three thousand dollars. That included the ERP system, their own private cloud storage, and a dedicated mail server under their control.
They weren’t paying per user. They weren’t paying for features they didn’t need. And they weren’t worried about pricing changes dictated by someone else’s roadmap.
Just as important as the cost was the shift in ownership.
Their data lived on infrastructure they controlled. Access rules were theirs to define. Integrations were built to support their workflows instead of forcing workarounds. As the business grew, they could add services without renegotiating contracts or migrating data.
This wasn’t about chasing the lowest price. It was about aligning cost with value.
At BUSATX, we help clients think beyond software subscriptions and look at systems holistically. Sometimes cloud services make sense. Other times, owning your infrastructure provides better stability, predictability, and long-term savings.
The key is understanding the tradeoffs.
For this client, moving away from rented platforms reduced annual costs, simplified operations, and gave them confidence that their systems would scale without surprises. They weren’t locked into a vendor. They weren’t guessing what next year’s pricing would look like. They owned the foundation their business relied on.
If you’re paying thousands each year for disconnected tools and still feel constrained, it may be worth stepping back and asking a different question. Not “what software should we add next,” but “what systems do we actually want to own.”
Sometimes, owning less software starts with owning more infrastructure.