The AI Engineer's

Dilemma
In the rapidly evolving world of Generative AI, the decision to build a GenAI
stack from scratch or buy a managed platform is pivotal. This ebook cuts
through the hype to reveal the hidden complexities that lie beneath the surface
of seemingly simple AI deployments. From data pipelines and infrastructure
scaling to model optimization and cost management, these unseen challenges
can overwhelm even the most capable engineering teams.

Drawing on real-world case studies and expert insights, we provide a strategic

framework to help you:

• Objectively assess your organization's readiness for building a custom AI

platform.
• Understand the true costs and trade-offs of the build vs. buy decision.
• Make informed choices that align with your unique business needs and
long-term goals.

Discover how leading companies like Checkr and Convirza have navigated this
critical decision, and learn how a managed platform can unlock the power of AI,
drive innovation, and create a competitive edge without reinventing the wheel.

Are you ready to navigate the GenAI platform maze?

2
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Understanding Your AI Needs 4
Chapter 2: The Building Blocks of GenAI Infra 12
Chapter 3: Pros/Cons of Building vs. Buying 33
Chapter 4: The TCO of Building AI Infra 36
Chapter 5: Decision Making Framework 39
Chapter 6: Real-World Build vs. Buy Case Study 47
Chapter 7: Best Practices & Next Steps 51

3
Chapter 1:
Understanding
Your AI Needs

4
Organizations face a pivotal choice when adopting generative AI: should they
build their own infrastructure or rely on managed platform? The appeal of
building in-house is understandable—greater control, custom capabilities, and
the possibility of reducing costs by avoiding unnecessary features.
However, the reality of building robust infra is often more complex than it
appears. Before choosing to “roll your own,” you should take a hard look at your
capabilities and goals.

Understanding Your AI
Resources and
Ambitions
The foundation for deciding whether to build or buy your AI infrastructure
starts by evaluating your team’s capabilities, your current AI needs, and your
long-term goals.

Strategic Alignment: Focus on What

Sets You Apart
Before investing engineering time into building GenAI infrastructure, ask a
simple question: Is your competitive edge in infrastructure or in the models and
products you build on top? If your value comes from proprietary data, custom
trained models, or the applications you're developing, then rolling your own
stack might be a distraction.

5
Building a custom platform makes sense if you're pioneering novel techniques
in distributed training or ultra low latency model serving. If that’s not your
game, you’re better off using a managed platform. It lets your team focus on:

• Designing and deploying better models

• Exploiting unique datasets
• Solving real business problems

Training a unique model does not require a unique platform.

Time Horizon: Today’s Needs vs.

Tomorrow’s Growth
Custom-built solutions might feel like a win in the early days—they're tightly
scoped, optimized, and feel "in control". But they rarely scale cleanly:

• Infrastructure debt compounds,

• New model architectures break early designs, and
• Engineering time shifts to maintenance, not innovation.

Managed platforms, by contrast, are designed to scale and typically support

new model and latest techniques. Align your choice with your growth plans.

Assessing Capabilities: Do Your

Teams Have What It Takes
When deciding whether to build or buy GenAI infrastructure, organizations
must evaluate their technical maturity, cultural readiness, and production
readiness.

6
Technical Maturity
Building a GenAI platform requires strong data infrastructure, specialized
engineering, and ML experience. Honestly assess your capabilities:

• Can your data infrastructure handle large-scale GenAI workloads?

• Do you have the engineering resources for monitoring, troubleshooting,
and 24/7 support?
• How experienced are you in deploying and scaling complex AI systems in
production?

Realistic talent assessment is crucial. Lack of technical maturity makes building

an in-house GenAI platform challenging, especially with multiple use cases.

Cultural Readiness
Cultural readiness encompasses several key factors:

• Adaptability to Change - the GenAI landscape evolves rapidly. It's important

to ask yourself: How quickly does your team adopt new technologies and
shift to agile approaches? Building your own stack takes a team that can
pivot quickly.
• Risk Tolerance - what's your organization's appetite for risk? Building your
own infra demands significant investment with no guaranteed success.
Would a managed platform, with its predictable path and risk mitigation, be
a better fit? And how important is predictable AI outcomes to your
business.
• Feedback and Iteration - agility and rapid iteration are crucial, especially in
fast-evolving AI. Organizations with strong feedback loops and iterative
development are better equipped to build in-house.
• Collaboration - developing GenAI applications demands expertise from
data scientists, ML engineers, domain experts and leadership. Are your
technical and non-technical teams collaborating and tightly integrated?

7
Production Readiness: Does Your AI
Stack Match Your Ambitions
The number of production AI use cases your organization plans to support is a
key indicator of readiness.

Current State Future Needs Maturity Level

Do you have a single, Will you primarily need How prepared are you
simple use case (e.g., to scale similar use to support multiple use
a basic chatbot) or cases (e.g., expanding cases simultaneously,
multiple, diverse the functionality of an with varying resource
GenAI applications existing chatbot) or demands, performance
(e.g., complex develop a diverse requirements, and
chatbots, content portfolio of GenAI maintenance
generation, applications (e.g., schedules
personalized rec.)? adding image
generation, code
completion, etc).

While a single small project might be manageable with a DIY approach or open-
source tools, scaling to multiple mission-critical use cases significantly
increases complexity.

8
As you scale AI at your organization, you will need a GenAI platform that can
support a mature set of capabilities.

Carefully assess your organization's ability to build and maintain such a

platform in-house vs. leveraging a managed solution. Does your team have the
expertise, resources, and long-term AI vision when making this decision.

9
Decision Factors
When evaluating whether to build or buy GenAI infrastructure, organizations
must consider several critical factors:

Scalability Requirements
Anticipate current and future capacity needs for both training and serving.
While training scalability handles complex models and larger datasets, serving
scalability manages growing user demands.

Examples:

• Convirza: Expanding from 20 to 60 AI indicators required scaling both

training infrastructure and serving capacity.
• Checkr: Currently processing millions of backgrounds checks and
continuing to grow rapidly every month, Checkr needed a low latency
system that can handle ever-growing list of classification tasks.

To prevent costly redesigns and ensure responsiveness, designing a system that

seamlessly scales, both accommodating demand and managing resources
efficiently, is essential, and helps in the long run.

10
Security & Compliance
Aligning with internal policies and regulations is paramount, especially for
sensitive data. Building in-house provides control to tailor security and ensure
compliance (e.g., HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II). Pre-built platforms offer robust
security features and certifications, potentially reducing regulatory risks.

Customization vs. Standardization

While custom platforms offer control, avoid over-customizing for current
needs, which limits future agility. Pre-built platforms provide a standardized,
adaptable foundation for faster deployment and pivoting. Choose a solution
that scales with you.

Cost Structures
Evaluate direct (software/hardware) and indirect (talent, training, downtime)
costs. Building in-house has higher upfront investments. Buying solutions offer
lower initial costs but recurring fees. Consider the total cost of ownership
(TCO) in your analysis.

11
Chapter 2:
The Building
Blocks of
GenAI Infra

12
The DIY Illusion
Spinning up a GenAI stack can look deceptively easy. Your CTO points to
Unsloth for fine‑tuning, vLLM for blazing‑fast inference, and a buffet of other
open‑source packages. Clone a repo, tweak a config, and we’re in production by
Friday… right?
Not quite. Under that quick‑start sheen lurks an iceberg of hidden effort:
provisioning and right‑sizing GPUs, building robust data pipelines, scheduling
continual retraining, squeezing out latency with kernel‑level hacks, and—most
punishing of all—standing up 24 × 7 monitoring and incident response. Miss
even one of those pieces and you’ll spend more time firefighting than shipping
features.

The most common “roll‑your‑own”

traps
• Operational drag – Production performance hinges on ruthless model
optimization (quantization, fine-tuning), distributed serving, and always‑on
monitoring/incident response—managing individual tools for each
workflow is a massive burden.
• Invisible total cost of ownership (TCO) – OSS licensing may be free, but
infra, talent, and maintenance bills snowball fast.
• DIY lock‑in – Heavy customization around niche OSS corners makes future
migration painfully slow.
• Talent bottlenecks – Kernel‑level optimization and distributed serving
expertise are scarce (and pricey to keep).

Before we plunge further, let’s break down the core building blocks of a
modern GenAI platform so you can weigh exactly what you’ll need to own
versus outsource

13
Core Components of a
GenAI Platform
A robust Generative AI platform is like a finely tuned engine, with
interconnected components working in harmon. Core components include:

1. Data Pipelines. Your models are only as good as their fuel. A tight pipeline
ingests messy, multi‑format data, cleans it on the fly, and streams
high‑quality batches to training jobs.
2. Model Dev & Training. Pick the right architecture, run disciplined
experiments, and fine‑tune fast. Track your versions and use clear metrics
to zero‑in on the best performer.
3. Deployment & Serving. Package once, ship anywhere. Containerize models
with dependencies baked in, drop them onto autoscaling clusters, and keep
latency predictable even when traffic spikes.
4. Monitoring & Maintenance. Production models never sleep. Track accuracy,
detect drift, and trigger retraining pipelines the moment performance dips.

14
When these four pillars seamlessly lock together, you get a true end‑to‑end
GenAI engine—one that ingests data, trains models, ships them to production,
and keeps everything humming without constant hero work. The payoff?
Engineers spend time inventing new user experiences, not wrestling with infra.
But, achieving this is anything but trivial. To unpack just how daunting that
integration can be, we’ll lean on an iceberg analogy in the next section.

The “Iceberg” Ahead

The iceberg chart reveals the deceptively small “visible” slice (quick demos and
clean APIs) sitting atop a massive, unseen mass of production hurdles.

Surface‑level Quick Wins

With open-source tools like Unsloth for fine‑tuning and vLLM for inference,
you can spin up a proof‑of‑concept in a weekend, but that demo is only the tip
of the iceberg. Once real latency targets, traffic spikes, and cost ceilings enter
the picture, the quick win reveals its limits: the hard part is transforming that
POC into a production‑grade, scalable, and cost‑efficient system.

Below the Waterline Production Challenges

True productionization means 24/7 uptime, sub‑second latency at peak load,
cost guardrails, audit‑grade security, and continuous model refreshes as data
and architectures evolve. That demands three pillars: clean data pipelines, an
automated training loop, and a rock‑solid serving layer. Miss one, and your
“quick win” becomes technical debt.
The iceberg rule applies: what you ship in week one is only 10 percent of what a
production-grade GenAI system requires. The other 90 percent—ongoing data
ingestion, model retraining, scaling, and ops—determines whether you delight
users or drown in pager alerts.

15
Let’s dive below the waterline of our
“iceberg” to examine the two core
pillars of a production-grade GenAI
stack: model training and serving.

16
LLM
Training
Shipping a production‑ready LLM is no weekend side project. In this section
we’ll dive beneath the training iceberg and expose the real lift: unifying messy
enterprise data, orchestrating fault‑tolerant distributed GPUs, continuously
tuning models for sharper accuracy, and locking it all down with iron‑clad
version control and governance.

17
Data Management
As a cornerstone of GenAI systems, the application's quality hinges on its
training data. While a prototype might rely on a HuggingFace dataset, you
probably want to use your own enterprise data for the production version,
presenting new complexities and challenges.

Core Capability Description

Data Ingestion There is a high chance your data will be fragmented

across different platforms: some data might live in
Snowflake, other in AWS S3, more in CRM, BigQuery,
and various APIs. This scattered data poses
integration challenges. Connectors from those
different sources will need to be implemented.

Data Cleaning You will also most likely encounter raw data
and Validation complexities with materials in mixed formats (Word,
PDF, HTML), corrupted files needing repair or
inconsistent formats. The data will require cleaning
through a process that includes repairing corrupted
files, standardizing file formats, and validating
automated labels through a dual system of manual
review cycles to catch subtle errors. These steps
ensured the raw data was accurate, consistent, and
ready for further processing.

Data After cleaning, you will need to perform

Transformation transformations to prepare the data for training. This
includes translating multilingual content into a unified
language format, removing PII from chat logs, and
using engineering scripts to convert processed data
into prompt-completion training pairs required by
LLMs. These transformations ensure the data is
structured and aligned with the specific requirements
of Generative Models.

18
Model Training and Experimentation
While your data team works on the data pipeline, your ML scientists can focus
on model selection. They can use Unsloth or Hugging Face's AutoTrainer to
rigorously evaluate and compare open-source foundational models,
benchmarking performance metrics to identify the optimal architecture for
their use case.

Core
Description
Capability

Recovery Fine-tuning large models is a time-intensive task, often

Protocols taking days or weeks. This lengthy process is prone to errors
from hardware failures, network instability, and memory
spikes. To mitigate data loss, automatic checkpointing and
recovery systems are crucial. Checkpoints save model states
periodically, enabling resumption from the last saved state
after interruptions like hardware failures or network issues.
This seamless recovery saves significant time and resources
by avoiding the need to restart training from scratch.

Batch Size Larger batch sizes leverage the GPU's parallel processing
Tuning capabilities, reducing training time by processing more data
in parallel, as long as they fit within the GPU's memory
constraints. However, increasing batch size raises the risk of
Out of Memory (OOM) errors, especially with longer input
sequences or larger models. Balancing batch size to avoid
OOM while maximizing GPU utilization is critical.
Implementing a dynamic batch size tuning mechanism,
which adjusts batch sizes based on available GPU memory,
ensures optimal utilization without causing OOM errors. By
implementing such a system, Predibase achieved 35%
reduced training durations.

19
Model Training and Experimentation
continued
Core
Description
Capability

Best Practices As datasets (and with bigger models too) grow, small
and optimizations make a big difference. In this blog,
Optimizations Predibase shares how they implemented such
optimizations to significantly accelerate training:
Sample Packing boosts throughput by 2-5x by
eliminating padding inefficiencies. FlashAttention-2
optimizes memory and compute, achieving 72% MFU
efficiency. Optimizer streamlining reduces
computational overhead, while selective gradient
checkpointing removal balances memory and speed.
These techniques require expertise to configure
effectively, as they involve trade-offs between memory,
computation, and model performance.

Continuous Periodic retraining introduces complexities, increasing

Model Training the risk of errors. It may also lead to unnecessary
resource consumption if updates occur without genuine
need. Conversely, it can miss sudden data changes or
emerging trends, potentially losing valuable insights.
Continuous model training is ideal for consistent
accuracy, triggered automatically by new data,
performance degradation, or data drift. This is
particularly beneficial in dynamic environments like
recommendation systems, fraud detection, real-time
personalization, and customer support chatbots,
ensuring timely adaptation to evolving patterns.

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Model Training GPUs
While a single GPU may suffice for fine-tuning lightweight open-source models
with smaller Hugging Face datasets, fine-tuning larger foundational models or
handling extensive datasets inevitably requires distributed training to
overcome memory and computational limitations.

Core
Description
Capability

Distributed Techniques like DeepSpeed ZeRO and Fully Sharded

Training Data Parallel (FSDP) are crucial for efficiently managing
memory by sharding model parameters, gradients, and
optimizer states across multiple GPUs, enabling the
training of models that exceed single-GPU VRAM limits.
However, these methods require careful configuration
and expertise to optimize performance, as finding the
appropriate settings for model sharding can be
complex.

GPU Distributed training requires multiple GPUs. However,

Availability and high-performing GPUs are in high demand and often
Intelligent have limited availability from cloud providers, leading
Provisioning to potential shortages. The alternative offered by cloud
providers to guarantee availability is ‘always-on’
instances, but this can be costly during idle periods.

Implementing an intelligent provisioning system that

dynamically selects optimal GPU configurations across
multiple providers offers a solution, as Predibase
details in this blog post. This approach not only
overcomes availability limitations but also reduces
dependency on a single cloud provider, mitigating the
risk of outages. Such a strategy can significantly
improve resource utilization and cost-efficiency in
distributed training scenarios.

21
Model Training GPUs Continued
Core
Description
Capability

GPU GPU power is finite and expensive, yet training larger

Optimization models on more data can significantly enhance your
GenAI app. To fit within budget constraints, various
optimizations are crucial. In this blog post, Predibase
details several of these optimizations and their
impressive results:
• Loading pre-quantized weights (4x faster loading)
• Sample packing (up to 5x faster training)
• Implementing Flash Attention (significant speedup in
attention computation)
• Optimizing CUDA kernels (up to 20% training speedup)

These techniques, among others, allow for training on

more data within existing GPU limitations, balancing
performance gains with infrastructure costs.
Implementing these optimizations requires expertise but
can yield substantial efficiency improvements.

Model Registry: AI Version Control

Finding the optimal base model, number of epochs, learning rate, batch size,
optimizer, and data augmentation strategies are essential for successful
training. A model registry provides a key role by:
• Tracking model variants and performance.
• Centralizing training configurations and hyperparameters.
• Insuring reproducible pipelines across environments.
The model registry brings order, transparency, and repeatability to the entire
model lifecycle.

22
LLM
Serving
Turning your LLM into a live, customer‑facing service is anything but a
“click‑to‑deploy.” In this section we’ll rip away the glossy endpoint wrapper and
take a look below the waterline to see what's truly required to build a scalable
and resilient production-grade serving stack.

23
Model Serving Infrastructure
Finally, your ML/MLOps engineers can focus on the serving aspect of your LLM.
They might choose to leverage tools like vLLM for efficient serving, but this
process also requires a robust and complete infrastructure stack.

Core
Description
Capability

Cluster GenAI applications require a robust container

Management orchestration system like Kubernetes to handle GPU
clusters effectively. Kubernetes enables GPU scheduling
through device plugins (e.g., NVIDIA or AMD), ensuring
efficient resource allocation. Features like autoscaling
dynamically adjust GPU nodes based on workload
demands, while node labeling and affinity rules ensure
compatibility with specific GPU types. Additionally, high-
speed networking solutions, such as InfiniBand or RDMA,
optimize communication between GPUs. And tools like
Run:AI or NVIDIA Triton further enhance workload
scheduling and resource utilization, minimizing idle times
and maximizing efficiency in GPU cluster operations.

Network Serving your model also requires network optimization

Optimization to maximize data transfer between GPUs and minimize
latency. At the physical level, it involves configuring high-
speed interconnects like InfiniBand and implementing
GPUDirect RDMA for direct GPU-to-GPU
communication. You may need to fine-tune the NVIDIA
Collective Communications Library (NCCL) parameters
for efficient multi-GPU and multi-node communication.
After implementing GPU-specific load balancing
strategies and ensuring proper GPU resource allocation
across nodes, make sure to build continuous monitoring
of GPU metrics, such as memory bandwidth and
utilization for real-time performance tracking.

24
Serving GPUs
Serving GPUs for GenAI applications faces similar challenges to training,
including GPU scarcity and costly always-on alternatives. While solutions from
training such as intelligent provisioning and GPU optimization can be
leveraged, serving also introduces unique demands:

• Low latency becomes critical for real-time user interactions.

• Handling variable traffic requires dynamic scaling.
• Cost optimization needs balancing with performance.
• High availability is essential for user-facing applications.

Core Capability Description

Auto-scaling GenAI traffic is highly unpredictable and variable.

serving GPUs & Persistent always-on deployment models create
Cost prohibitive costs, while under-provisioning GPUs lead
Management to Denial Of Service (DOS) during peak traffic. Beyond
intelligent provisioning, a strategic shift to hybrid
deployments combining reserved instances with
spot/preemptible nodes is crucial for optimizing costs
and performance.

This approach, which we detailed in this blog, balances

cost optimization with performance, ensuring efficient
resource utilization without compromising service
quality. It requires intricate orchestration and
advanced caching strategies to mitigate cold start
latency from preempted instances. By leveraging
training's lower priority aspect for LLM replicas,
organizations can achieve significant cost savings while
maintaining responsiveness to variable traffic
demands.

25
Customer-facing applications typically experience fluctuating traffic patterns,
with sharp spikes and dips throughout the day and week. This variability makes
it difficult to consistently optimize GPU utilization.

Engineering teams building their own infrastructure need to decide which

traffic patterns to prioritize and what trade-offs they're willing to make.

26
Teams focused on cost-efficiency may provision GPUs based on average
utilization. While this approach lowers expenses, it can lead to latency spikes
during peak traffic, potentially degrading the customer experience.

Conversely, more risk-averse teams may provision for peak capacity. This
guarantees performance during high-demand periods but often leaves GPUs
underutilized during off-peak hours. While it ensures availability, it also
introduces significant inefficiencies and hidden costs many businesses overlook
when scaling AI systems.

27
Serving GPUs continued
Core
Description
Capability

Performance Foundation models can be massive, requiring

Maximization substantial compute. However, smaller fine-tuned
models can outperform larger models for specific tasks.
To maximize performance, tools like open-source
LoRAX enable multi-LLM serving. With LoRAX, you can
serve over 100 fine-tuned models on a single GPU with
no degradation in throughput. This significanlty
improves GPU efficiency.

28
 Serving GPUs continued
Core Capability Description

Performance Quantization is another powerful lever for

Maximization performance optimization. It can reduce memory
(continued) footprint by 50%, increasing throughput and
potentially lowering costs by over 30%. However, if
implemented incorrectly, it may result in quality loss,
as experienced by some companies.

Speculative decoding significantly boosts inference

speeds. Predibase reports achieving 4x speed
improvements using FP8 and speculative decoding.

29
Inference benchmarks showing the improvements from Predibase's out of the box optimizations
Monitoring and Maintenance
Customer-facing applications demand 24/7 monitoring and maintenance,
requiring dedicated resources to ensure reliability and performance.

Core
Description
Capability

Logging and Effective monitoring begins with logging key metrics

Metrics and creating dashboards to track system health. Tools
like Datadog can be integrated with serving infra to
provide real-time insights on performance.

System Alerts Setting up alerts is the next step. Defining appropriate

thresholds often involves game days to simulate traffic
events and identify potential issues. These simulations
require careful planning, resource allocation, and
scheduling during low-impact periods. Once thresholds
are established, tools like PagerDuty can be configured
to handle incident notifications, ensuring prompt
responses to critical issue

Routine On-call rotation is need to resolve issues in real-time.

Monitoring This can place a significant burden on your team.
Depending on the complexity and maturity of your
application. Automating routine tasks or outsourcing
certain aspects of monitoring can alleviate this strain.

Infrastructure Regular infra and software upgrades are crucial for

Upgrades maintaining the performance and scalability of your
GenAI platform. This includes updating open-source
(Blue/Green tools like Kubernetes and the broader infrastructure
Deployments) stack to address vulnerabilities, improve efficiency, and
support new features. Proactive planning and thorough
testing in staging environments is essential before
deploying to prod.

30
Reliability and Resiliency
Designing for failure is the key to ensuring uptime. Through redundancy, geo-
distribution, traffic mirroring, and disaster recovery plans, GenAI
infrastructure can remain resilient—even when things go wrong.

Core
Description
Capability

Redundancy To ensure high availability and resilience in GenAI app

Plans infrastructure, redundancy is key. Strategies include:

• Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Architectures: Distribute

workloads across multiple cloud providers or combine
on-premises and cloud resources to avoid single points of
failure.
• Geo-Distributed Deployments: Deploy infrastructure
across regions for continued service during local outages.
• Active-Active Kubernetes Clusters: Operate multiple
clusters simultaneously across clouds, ensuring seamless
failover and load balancing.
• Geo-Sharded Model Caches: Store frequently accessed
models closer to users, reducing latency and
synchronizing updates across regions.
• Traffic Mirroring: Duplicate live traffic to validate
failover mechanisms without disrupting production.
• Load Balancing and Auto-Scaling: Dynamically
distribute traffic and scale resources to handle demand
spikes.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery: Regularly back up data
and establish recovery plans for quick restoration.

By combining these strategies, you can build a robust,

scalable, and fault-tolerant GenAI infrastructure capable
of maintaining uninterrupted service.

31
Reliability and Resiliency continued
Core
Description
Capability

Contingency Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Errors and
Planning unexpected events are inevitable, so reliability depends
on anticipating and quickly recovering from them. This
requires organizing game days to simulate failures,
creating a detailed incident response playbook, and
maintaining real-time dashboards to monitor key metrics.
These tools enable on-call teams to swiftly diagnose and
resolve issues, minimizing downtime and ensuring
seamless service continuity.

32
Chapter 3:
Pros/Cons of
Building vs.
Buying

33
When deciding whether to build a custom GenAI platform or adopt a managed
solution, organizations must weigh control and customization against cost,
speed, and operational overhead. Below is a high-level comparison:

Eval Criteria Build It Yourself Buy Managed Platform

Speed to Deploy 🔴 Slow – months to 🟢 Fast – deploy models

build infra and deploy in hours or less

Customization &
Control
🟢 Full Control – tailor
everything to your
🟡 Limited Customization
- vendor-defined
needs architecture

Upfront 🔴 High – requires ML 🟢 Low – vendor manages

Investment + infra + MLOps talent infrastructure

Talent
Requirements
🔴 High – requires
specialized, expensive,
🟢 Minimal – built-in
vendor expertise and
hard-to-find talent professional svcs

Scalability & 🟡 Must build and 🟢 Auto-scaling, SLAs,

Reliability maintain yourself; fault tolerance built-in
complex to get right

Maintenance 🔴 Heavy – continuous 🟢 Offloaded to vendor

Burden updates and fixes

Cost 🟡 Medium – unforseen 🟢 High – predictable

Predictability costs of scaling pricing models

Security &
Compliance
🟡 Must build and
certify yourself
🟢 SOC 2, data privacy,
enterprise controls

Long-Term
Strategic Value
🟢 High – own your
stack and IP
🟡 Medium – roadmap
driven by vendor

34
Pros / Cons continue

Eval Criteria Build It Yourself Buy Managed Platform

Adaptability
Over Time
🟡 Rigid – rework
needed for new needs
🟢 Flexible – supports
evolving AI use cases

Opportunity
Cost
🔴 High – infra takes
focus from product
🟢 Low – focus stays on
core AI application, not
innovation infra mgmt

Vendor
Dependency
🟢 None – you're in
control of your future
🔴 High – vendor sets
priorities and roadmap

Choosing whether to build or buy an AI development platform isn’t just a

matter of technical capability—it’s a strategic decision with long-term
implications.

Building offers deep customization, full control, and the potential for
proprietary advantages—but it demands significant investment, rare talent,
and ongoing maintenance that can divert focus from core innovation

In contrast, buying from a managed provider accelerates deployment, simplifies

maintenance, and ensures access to expert support and cutting-edge
capabilities. It reduces the engineering burden, enables predictable scaling, and
allows teams to focus on delivering business value rather than maintaining
infrastructure. However, buying may come with tradeoffs in roadmap control
and customization depth.

Ultimately, your choice depends on your organization's maturity, goals, and

priorities. Another key factor to consider is the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
In the next section we'll provide our TCO analysis for the two approaches.

35
Chapter 4:
The TCO of
Building AI
Infra

36
Understanding total cost of ownership (TCO) is critical for making informed,
long-term decisions about your GenAI strategy. The table below compares the
estimated annual costs of building an in-house GenAI platform versus using a
managed solution. While actual expenses will vary depending on your specific
needs, this comparison highlights the major cost drivers and provides a useful
framework for evaluating TCO and return on investment.

Cost Item In-House Managed Platform

1. Eng. Salaries 3-4 FTEs @ ~$300K* Included in vendor

fee
(ML Eng., Data Eng.) (~$900K – $1.2M)

2. Hiring & Training Recruiting & Minimal

Specialized Talent Onboarding

(~$20K – $50K)

3. Infra. Setup Servers, GPUs, Storage Variable, often

bundled or
(Compute, Storage) (Add. setup fees) discounted

4. Maintenance Ongoing Dev time Included in

subscription
(Upgrades/Security) (~$50K – $100K)

5. Outages & Internal On-Call & Vendor SLA /

Downtime Productivity Loss guaranteed uptime

6. Opportunity Cost Eng. Time on Infra. vs Minimal impact, focus

model improvements remains on core ML

Total Annual Cost** ~$1M – $1.5M*** $50K – $200K***

* Salary data from [Link]

** Actual costs vary based on project scope, team experience, and infra scale.
*** Illustrative estimates for typical mid-size ML deployments.

37
How to Read This Chart
1. Engineering Salaries: In-house development often requires multiple
engineers to manage data pipelines, DevOps, and infrastructure. A
subscription model spreads these costs across the vendor’s customer base.
2. Hiring & Training: Recruiting specialized ML infrastructure talent can be
expensive and time-consuming. A vendor subscription shifts that
responsibility to the managed provider.
3. Infrastructure Setup: Building a GenAI platform in-house may require
substantial upfront investments in hardware, GPU clusters, and
networking. Subscriptions often bundle or discount the infrastructure layer.
4. Maintenance & Upgrades: Patches, security updates, and regular feature
enhancements are standard in vendor offerings, whereas in-house teams
must allocate ongoing resources.
5. Unplanned Outages & Downtime: Managed solutions typically include
guaranteed SLAs. In a DIY approach, downtime costs can escalate quickly if
issues occur after hours or require specialized troubleshooting.
6. Opportunity Cost: Time spent on building and maintaining a platform is
time not spent creating unique ML solutions or adding new features to your
product—where your real competitive edge likely resides.
7. Total Annual Cost: These illustrative figures highlight how in-house totals
can easily surpass the price of a subscription, especially when factoring in
the long-term growth and complexity of ML projects.

38
Chapter 5:
Decision
Making
Framework

39
Build vs Buy Checklist
Use this checklist to assess your organization's readiness for building a GenAI
platform. Follow the steps to determine which approach is best for you.

Step 1: Initial Assessment

Number of Production Use Cases: Do you have 2 or more mission-critical ML
projects that require regular updates and maintenance? (Yes / No)

• If you answered “No”, a DIY approach may suffice if you’re only

experimenting, but reconsider if you plan to scale soon.
• If you answered “Yes”, go to Step 2 to determe the right solution for you.

Step 2: Detailed Evaluation

For questions in the table below, rate your organization using the following
scoring rubric:
1 = Not at all ready
2 = Somewhat ready
3 = Moderately ready
4 = Mostly ready
5 = Fully ready

40
Assess each criterion honestly based on your current capabilities and infra:

Criteria Score

1. Team Size & Specialized Expertise: Can your team handle

building and maintaining a custom GenAI platform (monitoring,
troubleshooting, etc.)?

2. Strategic Alignment: Is leadership committed and resourced to

develop and evolve an in-house GenAI platform long-term?

3. Technical Maturity & Tooling: Is your DevOps/MLOps

environment robust enough to support a custom-built platform?

4. Compliance & Security: Do you operate under strict regulations

(HIPAA, PCI, etc.) or have advanced security needs?

5. Speed to Market: Do your ML models require rapid iteration

and frequent updates to stay competitive?

6. Budget & Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Have you realistically

compared the cost of in-house staffing to a subscription fee?

7. Unique IP vs. Commodity Infrastructure: Are you creating

novel platform IP, or do you simply need reliable, standard ML
workflows?

8. Future-Proofing & Scalability: Can you keep pace with evolving

techniques for improving your ML model and application?

9. Risk Tolerance & Business Continuity: How critical are high-

quality proprietary models to your core operations?

10. 24/7 On-Call & Support: Are you prepared to staff after-hours
monitoring and handle downtime for critical ML systems?

41
Step 3: Calculate Your Score
Add the scores from questions 1-10. The maximum possible score is 50.

Step 4: Interpret Your Score

• 35-50 Points: Strong Build Readiness: Your organization is well-equipped to
build and maintain a GenAI platform in-house, especially if you answered
YES to Question #1.
• 20-34 Points: Hybrid Approach Recommended: Your organization may
benefit from a hybrid approach or a managed platform to supplement your
existing capabilities.
• Below 20 Points: Managed Solution Recommended: A managed solution is
likely more cost-effective and efficient. Your organization may not be ready
for the complexities of in-house development. Reassess regularly as your
capabilities evolve.

Important Considerations:
• This framework is a guide, not a definitive answer. Consider your specific
circumstances and priorities.
• Regularly revisit this checklist as your company matures or scales. A low
score today doesn't rule out future in-house capabilities.

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Risk Management &
Flexibility
Vendor stability
Committing to a vendor always involves risk. Assess these factors:

• Financial Stability: Can the vendor provide long-term service?

• Market Position: What's their industry track record and reputation?
• Long-Term Viability: What is their potential for growth and sustainability?
• Risk Mitigation: What contingency plans exist in case of vendor issues?
• Scalability: Can the vendor grow with your organization's needs?

Thorough assessment ensures vendors align with your AI objectives.

Fallback plans
Ensure your vendor has strong disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
Also, prepare your own failover strategies by:

• Ensuring data portability and export capabilities

• Planning ability to migrate to alternative solutions
• Creating contingency plans for service disruptions

Regularly evaluate vendor performance and maintain a switch-over

contingency plan.

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Future Proofing Infra
The table below compares the challenges of adapting to emerging AI
techniques, GPU architectures, and shifting business priorities when building
in-house versus leveraging a managed platform.

Leveraging Managed
Feature Building In-House
Platform

Adapting to Requires significant in- Vendor handles monitoring,

New house expertise in ML, evaluation, and integration
Techniques systems engineering, of new techniques. Offers
and distributed faster adoption and reduced
computing. High risk of risk, but less control over
incompatibility and implementation.
long testing cycles.

Adapting to Significant upfront Vendor handles evaluation

New GPU costs for acquiring and and integration of new GPU
Architectures optimizing for new architectures, providing
GPUs. Requires deep optimized performance with
understanding of GPU reduced complexity. Access
architectures and may be impacted by timing
parallel computing. and is dependent on
platform support.

Adapting to Requires significant Offers greater adaptability,

Business rework and adaptation enabling businesses to
Pivots of existing quickly adjust their AI
infrastructure, leading strategy without major
to inflexibility, long overhauls. May be limited by
development cycles, a lack of control and feature
and technical debt. gaps.

44
Key Principles for Future-Proofing
GenAI Applications
In the rapidly evolving world of GenAI, future-proofing your application is
essential for long-term success. Whether you choose to build in-house or
leverage a managed platform, these core principles will guide your decision-
making:

1. Modularity and Abstraction

A central tenet of future-proofing any GenAI application, whether built in-
house or leveraged through a managed platform, lies in modularity and
abstraction. This means creating a framework that lets you swap out
components without affecting the entire system. If building in-house, focus on
establishing clear APIs for each component. If buying a platform, be sure to
assess how simple it is to integrate new components. One must consider how
easily one can upgrade their platforms.

2. Open Standards and Interoperability

Adhering to open standards and prioritizing technologies that promote
interoperability is a very important step when future-proofing a GenAI
application. Doing so helps with integration with other systems and helps with
any solution changes over time. If you are building, be sure to use open-source
tools and technologies that match the industry. For any business looking to buy,
you will want to take precautions and go with platforms that give access to
industry standards. Can you integrate your platform, and what measures were
set to make it happen?

3. Automation and Scalability

Automation and scalability are critical pillars for future-proofing AI. This
principle states the need for automation and scaling to continue improving at a
steady rate. With AI becoming ever more common, it's very likely your team's
usage will scale. When building, you will want to prioritize automatic
infrastructure and be ready to handle anything that might come your way.

45
For platforms that are bought, it's great to go with one that has full
development, as well as auto management. It is important to know whether
your current platform will support your models if they are scaled.

4. Data Governance and Security

Having a set of data governance and security measures is key to protecting
data while following compliance. These measures ensure that no one's personal
data is compromised. Building the controls from the start will prove to be
beneficial. Platforms can be used to guarantee that the system is stable. Make
sure the new platform is going to be able to help with security.

5. Cost Optimization
Continuous cost monitoring and optimizing the amount you are spending
should be done to create better output and prevent overspending. To optimize
your cost, be sure to first implement monitoring tools. However, it is important
that your platform is optimized to ensure that computing power isn't lacking.
Can it beat the proprietary model?

46
Chapter 6:
Real-World
Build vs. Buy
Case Study

47
Convirza's software analyzes millions of hours of customer calls, helping teams
evaluate agents and gain actionable insights. Their platform dissects each
conversation using 20-60 “Al indicators”, requiring it to manage highly variable
workloads, high throughput, and sub-second response times.

Challenges Convirza Faced

Convirza's attempt to build an AI platform revealed several key challenges:

• Unexplained System Crashes: Frequent crashes disrupted operations and

compromised data analysis.
• Memory Issues: Scaling call volumes strained computational resources.
• Limited Expertise: They realized they needed to expand their engineering
team for more operational stability.
• Lack of 24/7 Stability: Ensuring round-the-clock reliability of their Al
infrastructure required specialized knowledge their team didn't have.

They then explored options, including OpenAl, but they didn't meet
performance or support levels. Building in-house would have tripled the
timeline, which wasn't acceptable.

How a Managed Solution Addressed the Challenges

Convirza transitioned to Predibase's Inference Engine with LoRA Exchange to
address these challenges. Convirza adopted a managed GenAl platform to
handle their complex infrastructure needs, including serving and training.
Leveraging Predibase’s LoRA eXchange (LoRAX) inference engine, they were
able to increase the number of indicators from 20 to 60 without scaling up their
infrastructure, and could serve all 60 specialized models at the cost of running
just one base model.

48
Quantifiable Results
Using a managed platform helped achieve:

• 10x Reduction in Operational Costs: Compared to OpenAI.

• 8% Improvement in F1 Scores: On average.
• 80% Increase in Throughput.
• Consistent Sub-Second Mean Inference Times.

By outsourcing infrastructure management, Convirza could focus on core

products such as: creating nuanced AI models that analyze calls using 40 more
indicators, and help them give service.

49
As Giuseppe Romagnuolo, VP of AI at Convirza, noted,

“
Customers noticed a difference in the quality of their scorecards immediately.
They can more effectively measure the metrics that matter to them and give
agents the support they need to deliver quality service.

By combining these strategies, it allows for a managed platform that offers a

strategic advantage such as faster innovation, greater reliability, and lower
investment compared to an in-house solution.

This shows that in companies such as Convirza, they can compete effectively in
the AI Space, and allow them to focus on value.

50
Chapter 7:
Best
Practices &
Next Steps

51
Actionable Next Steps
Implementing a GenAI strategy is an ongoing journey. Here are concrete steps
to get started:

52
About Predibase
Predibase stands out as the premier platform for customizing and serving
open-source LLMs at scale, offering a comprehensive fully managed solution
for enterprises looking to harness the power of AI efficiently. Predibase is in
production with AI leaders and innovators:

• Try for free with $25 in credits: [Link]

• Book a custom demo with an LLM expert: [Link]

53
The Predibase Difference
1. Hyper-Efficient Inference: Predibase simplifies inference with innovations
like Turbo LoRA, which increases throughput by 2-4x compared to
traditional methods, and seamless GPU autoscaling to handle enterprise
workloads of hundreds of requests per second.
2. Full Lifecycle Model Management: The platform manages the entire model
lifecycle, from fine-tuning to deployment, allowing teams to focus on
innovation rather than infrastructure challenges.
3. Enterprise-Grade Reliability: Predibase is enterprise-ready, offering
deployments in private cloud environments, guaranteed GPU capacity, and
multi-region high availability to ensure mission-critical applications meet
service-level agreements.
4. Performance at Scale: By leveraging Predibase's infrastructure, companies
can significantly reduce the time and resources typically required for
building and maintaining complex serving stacks while still achieving
cutting-edge performance.

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