Let’s face it, it’s not 2019 anymore and Infrastructure has fundamentally changed.
Not just because more and more organisations are moving services into the cloud (although that’s obviously a huge part of it), but because the pace of change is now constant.
New environments get spun up quickly, security policies evolve, teams change, suppliers change and small “
one-off” fixes have a habit of becoming permanent.
That’s where things get messy.
When infrastructure is built and updated through manual steps, it’s hard to keep it consistent.
Two environments that should be identical slowly drift apart. A change gets made in a hurry and nobody can quite remember what it was six months later. Sound familiar?
The results aren’t just technical frustration (or just frustration in general if we’re being honest).
They’re real business risk: outages take longer to resolve, audits take longer to evidence and costs creep up in places nobody expected.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is one of the clearest ways to get control back.
Instead of relying on clicks, memory and undocumented decisions, IaC lets you define infrastructure in a written format that can be reviewed, tracked and repeated.
Done well, it helps teams build the same environment reliably, understand what changed and when, and rebuild with confidence when something goes wrong.
Why Infrastructure As Code Exists
Infrastructure as Code didn’t appear because teams really wanted another technical trend to learn. No, it exists because the way infrastructure is delivered now no longer matches the way organisations operate.
Most organisations have come to expect their technology will change often, scale quickly and recover fast when something goes wrong. But traditional, manually managed infrastructure struggles under that weight. Not because the people running it aren’t capable… but because the model itself doesn’t hold up anymore.
IaC is the response to that issue.
Modern Infrastructure Changes Too Fast To Be Managed Manually
In the past, infrastructure changed slowly. Systems were built, tweaked occasionally and then left alone for long periods. That made manual processes workable, even if they weren’t perfect.
That’s no longer the world most organisations are operating in.
Today, environments are created and adjusted far more frequently.
New applications appear. Security requirements shift. Integrations get added. Suppliers change. Teams evolve.
Each change on its own feels manageable, but over time they stack up.
When those changes rely on people remembering what was done last time, or repeating long sequences of manual steps? That’s where things start to drift.
Small differences creep in. Documentation falls behind reality. The infrastructure still works, but it becomes harder to explain, harder to trust and harder to change safely.
IaC exists because manual consistency just can’t scale when change becomes constant.
Consistency, Not Speed, Is The Real Problem IaC Solves
IaC is often described as a way to move faster.
That can be true, but it’s not the main benefit. The real value is in it’s consistency.
With Infrastructure as Code, environments are defined once and reused. The same definition can create a test environment, a production environment or a recovery environment, without relying on interpretation or memory. Changes are deliberate, visible and traceable.
And that matters well beyond IT teams.
For leadership, consistency reduces risk.
It makes costs easier to predict. It shortens recovery times. It makes audits and compliance conversations simpler, because there is a clear record of how systems are meant to be built and how they actually are built.
In short, IaC exists to make infrastructure predictable again, even when everything around it keeps changing.
How Infrastructure As Code Supports Modern Infrastructure
Infrastructure as Code isn’t about changing what organisations need from their infrastructure.
It’s about changing how reliably those needs can be met.
As estates grow and evolve, infrastructure has to support frequent change without becoming fragile. IaC is there to provide a practical way to do that, by making environments consistent, changes deliberate and recovery realistic.
Repeatable Environments Without Guesswork
One of the biggest challenges in modern infrastructure is consistency. Development, test, production and recovery environments often start out similar, but over time small differences creep in.
With IaC, environments are created from the same definition every time. That means teams aren’t relying on interpretation, memory or slightly different processes for each environment. If an environment needs to be recreated, it can be built again in a known, predictable way.
That reduces surprises, shortens delivery timelines and removes a lot of unnecessary risk from day-to-day operations.
Changes That Can Be Reviewed, Tracked And Reversed
When infrastructure is managed manually, changes tend to happen quickly and quietly.
Someone fixes an issue, makes an improvement or responds to an urgent request, and the details live in their head rather than in a shared record.
IaC changes that dynamic.
Infrastructure changes become visible and intentional. They can be reviewed before they’re applied, tracked over time and reversed if something doesn’t behave as expected.
That makes change safer, not slower, and gives organisations a much clearer understanding of how their infrastructure evolves.
For leadership teams, this creates confidence that changes are controlled, auditable and aligned to the wider organisation, not just expedient in the moment.
Infrastructure That Can Be Rebuilt, Not Just Maintained
Traditional infrastructure is often treated as something that must be carefully preserved. If it breaks, teams patch it back together and hope nothing else is affected.
IaC supports a different mindset.
Because infrastructure is defined and repeatable, it can be rebuilt when needed rather than nursed indefinitely. That makes recovery planning more realistic and resilience easier to test, not just document.
When something goes wrong, the question shifts from “How do
we fix this?” to “
How quickly can we restore what we know works?”… which is a far stronger position to be in.
Infrastructure As Code & Risk Reduction
Risk in infrastructure rarely comes from a single big failure. It’s something that builds up over time, often unnoticed through small inconsistencies, undocumented changes and systems that no one fully understands anymore.
Infrastructure as Code helps reduce that risk by making infrastructure easier to reason about, easier to recover and easier to govern, without adding unnecessary process.
Reducing Configuration Drift
Configuration drift happens when environments that should be the same slowly become different. A setting gets changed in one place but not another. A quick fix solves today’s problem but isn’t applied everywhere. Over time, those differences stack up.
The result is infrastructure that behaves unpredictably. Issues are harder to reproduce, fixes take longer to apply and confidence in the environment starts to erode.
IaC tackles this by treating the desired state of infrastructure as the source of truth. If something changes outside that definition, it’s visible. If an environment needs to be brought back into line, it can be recreated or corrected using the same known configuration.
That reduces surprises and makes infrastructure behaviour far more predictable.
Making Recovery And Resilience Practical
Most organisations have recovery plans. Far fewer, that I’ve seen, regularly test whether those plans would actually work under pressure.
When infrastructure is built manually, recovery often relies on documentation, screenshots and people remembering how things were set up.
In a real incident, that slows everything down.
With Infrastructure as Code, recovery becomes a practical exercise rather than a theoretical one. Environments can be rebuilt using the same definitions used day to day, not a special set of emergency instructions.
That shortens recovery times, reduces dependency on specific individuals and makes resilience something that can be validated, not just hoped for.
Where Infrastructure As Code Fits In An Organisation
One of the most common misconceptions that I’ve seen about Infrastructure as Code is that it’s a purely technical concern. Something that should be owned by developers… or something for infrastructure teams to worry about once everything else is in place.
In reality, IaC should sit much closer to the centre of how an organisation runs its technology.
It influences how teams work together, how risk is managed and how investment in infrastructure delivers value over time.
Not A Developer Tool, Not An Operations Tool
IaC shouldn’t be owned by a single role or team.
Developers benefit from it because environments behave consistently and changes are easier to reason about. Operations teams then benefit because the organisations infrastructure is more predictable and easier to maintain. Security teams also benefit because configurations are visible and repeatable.
But IaC itself isn’t “
for” any one of them is my point.
It’s a shared foundation that supports all of them working in a more joined-up way, rather than passing problems between silos.
When infrastructure is defined clearly, conversations shift away from blame and towards outcomes.
A Shared Foundation Across IT, Security And Finance
Because IaC makes infrastructure explicit, it creates clarity across the organisation.
IT teams gain better visibility into how systems are built and changed. Security teams can see how controls are applied and maintained. Finance teams get more predictable cost models and fewer surprises caused by undocumented changes or inconsistent environments.
For leadership, that level of shared understanding reduces risk and improves decision-making. Infrastructure becomes something that can be discussed in terms of trade-offs, priorities and outcomes, rather than something that only makes sense to specialists.
That’s why IaC fits best when it’s treated as an organisational capability, not just a technical implementation.
Common Misunderstandings About Infrastructure As Code
Infrastructure as Code is widely talked about, but not always well understood. Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed that these misunderstandings can create hesitation, especially at leadership level, where it’s not always clear what adopting IaC will really mean in practice.
Clearing up a few common misunderstandings then might help set realistic expectations and avoid IaC being seen as something it isn’t…
IaC Isn’t Just Automation Or Scripting
IaC is sometimes described as “
automating infrastructure”. I’ve used the phrase myself in fact, but it’s only part of the story.
Automation focuses on speeding things up.
IaC focuses on defining what infrastructure should look like and making that definition the reference point. Automation may be involved, but the real value comes from clarity and control, not just faster execution.
You can automate poorly designed infrastructure and still end up with fragile systems. IaC is about making infrastructure understandable, repeatable and deliberate first.
IaC Does Not Replace Good Infrastructure Design
Another common concern is that IaC somehow replaces the need for thoughtful infrastructure design. It doesn’t (and never will in my opinion).
IaC captures decisions, it doesn’t make them. Choices about architecture, security, resilience and performance still need to be made carefully. Writing them down as code simply makes those choices visible and repeatable.
In fact, IaC often highlights weaknesses that already exist. If infrastructure is hard to define clearly, that’s usually a sign that it needs better design, not better tooling.
How Organisations Typically Get Started With IaC
The good news is that adopting Infrastructure as Code won’t mean a wholesale rebuild of everything you already have. In fact, the organisations I’ve seen get the most value from IaC usually start small and build confidence over time.
The aim isn’t to move fast for the sake of it. It’s to introduce consistency and control in places where they’ll have the biggest impact.
Standardising New Environments First
A common and sensible starting point is new infrastructure.
Rather than retrofitting IaC across an entire existing estate, organisations often use it to define how new environments should be built going forward. That might be a new application, a new service, or a new platform environment.
That kind of approach keeps risk low.
Teams can see the benefits of consistency and repeatability without disrupting systems that are already in use. Over time, those definitions become a reference point for how infrastructure should be delivered more broadly.
Bringing Existing Infrastructure Under Control Over Time
Existing environments don’t need to be converted overnight either.
As systems are upgraded, replaced or consolidated, IaC can be introduced gradually. Parts of the infrastructure that change most often, or cause the most friction, are usually good candidates to tackle first.
This phased approach helps organisations avoid “
big bang” change, whilst still moving towards a more controlled and predictable infrastructure estate.
How FormusPro Approaches Infrastructure As Code
Infrastructure as Code works best when it’s treated as part of a broader infrastructure capability, not a standalone initiative.
At FormusPro, we approach IaC in exactly that way.
Our focus is on helping organisations use IaC to bring clarity, consistency and resilience to their infrastructure, in a way that fits their operating model and their wider technology landscape.
Infrastructure As Code As Part Of A Broader Infrastructure Practice
IaC is never implemented in isolation.
We look at how your infrastructure is currently designed, how it’s managed day to day and how it needs to support the organisation over time. That context matters, because IaC should reinforce good decisions, not codify existing problems.
By treating IaC as part of a wider infrastructure practice, it becomes a foundation for reliable delivery rather than another layer of complexity. It supports security, resilience and scalability without forcing unnecessary change or disruption.
Designed To Support Cloud, Hybrid, And Evolving Estates
Most organisations aren’t starting from a blank sheet.
They’re operating across a mix of platforms, environments and legacy decisions that still matter.
Our approach to IaC reflects that reality.
We focus on helping organisations introduce structure and repeatability where it delivers the most value, whilst supporting estates that continue to evolve over time. That means Infrastructure as Code becomes a practical enabler, not a constraint … supporting modernisation at a pace that makes sense for the organisation.
Is Infrastructure As Code Right For Every Organisation?
Infrastructure as Code is a powerful approach, but it isn’t a silver bullet.
Like any capability, it delivers the most value when it’s applied in the right context and for the right reasons.
Understanding where IaC fits best helps organisations make informed decisions, rather than adopting it simply because it’s widely discussed.
When IaC Delivers The Most Value
IaC tends to have the biggest impact in organisations in which infrastructure changes regularly, environments need to stay aligned and recovery time really matters.
That might be because teams are supporting multiple applications, operating across environments, meeting regulatory requirements or planning for growth. In these situations, the ability to define infrastructure clearly and recreate it reliably becomes a genuine advantage, not just a technical improvement.
IaC is also particularly valuable where responsibility for infrastructure spans multiple teams. A shared definition reduces friction and makes collaboration far easier.
When Other Foundations Need Attention First
In some cases, organisations benefit more from addressing basic infrastructure design or operational clarity before introducing IaC.
If systems are poorly understood, heavily customised or already fragile, writing them down as code won’t fix those underlying issues. In fact, it can highlight them quickly. That isn’t a reason to avoid IaC. It’s a signal that the groundwork needs to be done first, so IaC reinforces good decisions rather than locking in bad ones.
Used thoughtfully, Infrastructure as Code helps organisations regain control of modern infrastructure. Used blindly, it risks becoming just another layer of complexity. The difference lies in how and why it’s adopted.
