Cure tech sprawl to fuel AI innovation
October 20, 2025, began innocently enough — a Monday to open the work week. But that calm soon led to panic when a software bug caused a massive AWS outage that impacted some of the world’s largest companies and many of their most-used applications and services. The cause of the issue was two programs trying to write the same DNS entry simultaneously. That entry wound up being empty; several other AWS services spiraled out of control from there. The outage left customers with AWS in their tech stack in the dark while engineers scrambled for answers.
This situation exposes what can go wrong when you rely on too many third-party dependencies. While removing them from your tech stack entirely is likely not an option, most organizations have an abundance of these applications and platforms. The uncontrolled growth of tools, services, environments, and complexity — known as “tech sprawl” — is a real operational risk and security challenge.
In response to increasing tech stack complexity and enterprise concerns about financial stability and uncertainty, security and IT leaders are making platform consolidation a strategic priority. However, tech stack consolidation is often more complicated than it appears. Most organizations are frustrated with their perceived lack of progress. Teams want to turn things off fast, but replacing services takes time. Issues like the high cost of switching, compatibility struggles, vendor false promises, and the product expertise and preferences of internal teams can all complicate the consolidation journey.
Despite these obstacles, tech sprawl must be addressed instead of ignored. A fragmented stack is a direct barrier to an IT leader’s efficiency, agility, and security operations. Plus, companies are always running more SaaS applications than they realize.
How consolidating your tech stack leads to modernization
Tech stack consolidation has emerged as a key component of broader modernization efforts, particularly as organizations prepare for an AI-driven future. The rise of AI has brought sharp attention to data quality as one of the most pressing challenges facing organizations today. Consolidating many disparate applications into fewer, more robust platforms to run key business processes is a critical first step toward improving data quality while simultaneously making room for AI integration.
Making room for AI isn’t just important — it’s essential. The technology is evolving so rapidly that it’s becoming self-disruptive, with each advancement rendering previous approaches obsolete at an unprecedented pace. Organizations that remain mired in tech sprawl will find themselves unable to capitalize on AI’s transformative potential.
Hidden costs of third-party tools and vendors
Global IT spending will top $6 trillion in 2026, according to an October 2025 Gartner forecast. Companies are investing more in software in general, and software that incorporates generative AI is fueling even greater spending.
It’s a tricky path to navigate: Businesses hope to optimize costs because of an uncertain economic climate and a growing need to prove the value of SaaS applications. Simultaneously, companies’ AI initiatives are the biggest driver of costs. The 2026 Cloudflare App Innovation Report found 72% of leading organizations attribute expected budget changes to AI adoption.
A bloated tech stack keeps IT departments stuck in place. Tech stack fragmentation introduces hidden costs for IT and security teams alike, including:
Security risks: The more third-party platforms there are to manage, the higher the security risk. Compromised credentials are more likely as employees reuse passwords across accounts. Additionally, multiple vendors have access to company data. Mistakes by a vendor’s employee could ripple throughout the partner ecosystem. In those situations, you’re often at the mercy of the third party to solve the issue.
Wasted money and time: Nearly three in four IT decision-makers say their company has exceeded its fiscal year cloud budget, according to Forrester. Inefficiencies such as duplicate licenses, unused seats, forgotten environments from past projects, and poorly architected workloads all add up.
Reduced productivity: Developers work hard to hit sprint goals and production cycles, and security teams work hard to keep the organization and its customers safe. A fragmented tech stack slows both down. They consume time and mental energy with context switching and navigating complex systems, get bogged down in maintenance tasks, and may rely on coding shortcuts that lead to technical debt.
Tech sprawl isn’t something that happens all at once. It builds over time. The solution is similarly long-term and ongoing in nature. Organizations can reduce cyber security complexity, total costs of ownership, and drag on employee efficiency by consolidating vendors and tools through a unified platform.
How to successfully consolidate your tech stack
Software consolidation offers several benefits — which could explain why the majority of buyers in almost every IT product category have consolidation plans, according to research from BCG. Despite the desire for speed, tech stack consolidation requires time and thoughtful planning. When hundreds or even thousands of SaaS applications are used within the company, it’s not feasible to tackle everything at once. Approaching tech stack consolidation in smaller steps is a more realistic and sound strategy.
Enterprises that adopt a methodical, planned approach will typically see more success. Taking the following actions can help organizations rationalize tech stacks for IT as well as cyber security:
1. Review your current tech stack
Audit your current tech stack to identify redundancies and inefficiencies and to define clear goals for what consolidation should achieve. A sprawling tech stack introduces so much complexity that no tool can be leveraged to its fullest potential. Speak with each department to see what applications they're using and how they're using them. Categorize items like cost, contract length, quantity and type of users, and integrations.
I like to look at how an application’s customer success team interacts with me. If they understand how I use their product, they can make recommendations for getting the most out of it. Ideally, you’ll continue relationships with the companies that treat you as a genuine partner and terminate relationships with companies that treat you only as a buyer.
Key benefit: Identifying extraneous or redundant tools generates cost savings that companies can allocate toward other priorities.
2. Use the edge
Implement edge models, such as security service edge (SSE) and secure access service edge (SASE) models. The right SSE will enable capabilities like secure web gateway, data loss prevention, and zero trust network access all from one platform. An SASE solution pairs the security capabilities of SSE with networking services, leading to a comprehensive, single-stack cloud platform that tackles both connectivity and security challenges.
Key benefit: IT teams can monitor applications and put security standards in place more easily with a unified tech stack, offering direct “any-to-any” connectivity among users, applications, ISPs, teams, and cloud instances.
3. Optimize infrastructure with a cloud application platform
Leverage global cloud infrastructure for simpler collaboration and faster deployment through scalable, on-demand computing services. Using a cloud application platform can help, such as implementing an API-first shared-services approach to improve fault tolerance and enable more flexibility. When people are all in the same tool, they unlock its collaboration capabilities.
Key benefit: Accelerated innovation and time to market make it easier to meet deadlines and deliver a positive user experience.
4. Assign clear ownership
Consolidation is a team effort. You want other departments to see every SaaS application they have so they’re accountable for what to keep and what to remove. From auditing to deleting accounts, canceling subscriptions, and installing tools, assigning ownership helps everyone stay on track.
Key benefit: Unifying the stack creates a single source of truth for collecting and managing data, which also benefits compliance audits.
5. Work in small increments
There’s a difference between simple and easy. If you needed to cross a river, the easy route would be filling it with rocks and walking across. The simple strategy would be constructing a sturdy bridge that lasts a long time. A significant portion of tech sprawl occurs because organizations add applications that are easy — not necessarily simple — fixes to problems.
Consolidation requires strategy. It’s not something you can immediately jump into and expect success. Methodical preparation and routine are less stressful and more likely to succeed than massive one-off investments.
Key benefit: Simplifying operations and streamlining workflows — for example, reducing the number of tools in a process and automating or eliminating tasks — eases friction and increases success.
Mistakes to avoid during tech stack consolidation
Those steps can help reduce the challenges of tech stack consolidation. To simplify the process further and avoid common mistakes, take the following actions:
1. Be cautious of trendy tools.
Although experimenting with tools is a good thing, it’s easy to be bewitched by temporary fads and trends that consume resources without adding value. Think about your company’s specific challenges and what will actually boost your teams. Talk to team members to learn what’s working and where issues remain, or even sit next to them and watch them work.
In previous roles, I’ve watched people with multi-system workflows that required a lot of chair-swiveling and were inherently inefficient. When you see that as part of your consolidation efforts, you’re naturally going to remove those more outrageous scenarios.
2. Collaborate with other departments.
Tech stack consolidation is an ongoing process. Implementing it requires consistent tracking, data management, and feedback. Regularly speaking with other leaders in the organization can unlock new insight. I encourage leaders of infrastructure, security, and developer teams to share notes and highlights with each other on a regular basis.
What enhances a tech stack consolidation strategy?
Removing tech sprawl starts with understanding where you’re currently at and where you want to go with regards to achieving the proper infrastructure under a unified network fabric. As AI evolves, pivoting will be much easier with a consolidated strategy.
Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud frees up IT teams in their platform consolidation quest. It’s a unified, intelligent platform with one network, one control plane, and a single management interface. Those superpowers increase organizational agility and security while improving tech stack efficiency.
The path to long-term success must go through tech stack consolidation. Rather than adopting a reactive position, take control from the start. Be hands-on to determine where the value lies and how you can best unlock it.
This article is part of a series on the latest trends and topics impacting today’s technology decision-makers.
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Author
Mike Hamilton — @mikehamilton
CIO, Cloudflare
Key takeaways
After reading this article you will be able to understand:
How platform consolidation fuels data quality for AI innovation
5 steps to cut tech sprawl and fund AI modernization
Avoiding common mistakes when scaling AI and new infrastructure