An Omnistrate powered application can be deployed (as a Managed Service) within an end-customer’s AWS, GCP or Azure cloud account. This ability was a primary topic for most of our customer conversations in 2024, and perhaps one of the most common reasons that companies chose Omnistrate today.

I want to explain why this matters, why it is hard, and why you may want to look for Omnistrate’s help to support your customers BYOA asks as well.

The importance of Data in the AI World:

Two of the biggest lessons from the past few years (especially in this “year of AI”) … Applications are only as good as the data that powers them, and companies are putting more and more restrictions on where their proprietary data is accessible from. In 2025 we see these issues accelerating even faster, as companies will find even more reasons to not allow their proprietary data outside of their realm of control.

This means that new applications must be designed with Data Access in mind, and all new applications must have the ability to be deployed next to their customer’s data, in both physical location (data center) as well as realm of security control (cloud account ownership)

BYOA (Bring your own cloud Account)

The Bring Your Own Account (BYOA) deployment model allows customers to run a vendor’s managed service within their own cloud environment instead of relying on a fully hosted solution. This approach enables businesses to take full advantage of a SaaS product's capabilities while retaining complete control over their cloud infrastructure, security, compliance, and data residency.

Databricks: A Leading Example of BYOA SaaS

One of the most well-known companies leveraging BYOA is Databricks. Rather than hosting its service in a vendor-controlled cloud account, Databricks enables customers to deploy and run their AI and data platform within their own AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud environments.

How Databricks Implements BYOA

Compute & Storage Stay in the Customer’s Cloud

• All compute and storage resources remain within the customer's cloud account, ensuring that Databricks never directly stores customer data.

• Centralized Control Plane Managed by Databricks

• While workloads execute in the customer’s cloud, Databricks maintains a centralized control plane, which handles:

• Deployment, orchestration, and management of workloads

• Product updates, security patching, disaster recovery, backups, and scalability

• Usage tracking, billing, and cost optimization

By following this hybrid approach, Databricks provides the flexibility and security enterprises demand, while still offering SaaS-like convenience for deployment, management, and cost efficiency.

Why is BYOA required for success in 2025?

For highly regulated industries, air-gapped environments, and customers with strict security and compliance mandates, manual distribution is often the only viable option. These one-off, high-touch deployments command premium pricing to justify the additional complexities of custom support, integrations, and dedicated resources. However, this approach is difficult to scale across broader customer segments—particularly in commercial, mid-market, and fast-growing enterprises—where self-service deployment and automation are critical for efficiency.

Another common SaaS model is the fully-hosted approach, where the provider not only delivers the software but also manages the entire infrastructure. This model simplifies adoption, as customers only need an internet connection to access the application without the hassle of managing their own cloud accounts. However, this model requires enterprises to ship their data to SaaS providers, which has become a huge issue in an agentic world.

BYOA (Bring Your Own Account) presents a compelling alternative by enabling customers to deploy and manage software within their own cloud accounts, reducing friction, improving cost transparency, and streamlining upgrades. This model aligns with modern SaaS distribution by offering flexibility, security, and control while ensuring that cloud costs are borne by the customer rather than the SaaS provider. For startups bringing new cloud offerings to market, offering a BYOA deployment option is not a matter of “if” but “when.”

Ultimately, businesses benefit from a hybrid approach—leveraging manual licensing for high-value, compliance-driven deals while embracing BYOA and automated provisioning for scalable, repeatable deployments in broader markets. Supporting multiple deployment models allows companies to seamlessly serve different market segments, reduce customer friction, and scale efficiently. A key measure of SaaS business efficiency is the customer-to-employee ratio, where top-performing companies aim for >1000:1.

Not only does this approach benefit customers, but it also enhances a company's valuation. Investors pay a 2.0x - 3.5x premium for businesses with a SaaS model because they recognize the power of reducing friction and streamlining operations to accelerate scalable growth.

Why is building your own BYOA based SaaS offer hard?

Designing a Bring Your Own Account (BYOA) solution that matches the functionality of Databricks is significantly more complex than developing a traditional SaaS offering. Unlike fully hosted SaaS, BYOA must operate across a diverse set of cloud environments, customer configurations, and security requirements, introducing multiple layers of complexity.

A BYOA solution needs to run seamlessly across multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), each with unique APIs, networking models, and security policies. Ensuring compatibility across these platforms requires deep integration with their ecosystems while maintaining consistent functionality for customers. One of the biggest challenges is security—the SaaS provider must enable secure access without requiring open firewalls, credential sharing, or transmitting unencrypted data over the internet. Many enterprises impose strict security requirements, including detailed audit logs, restricted permissions, network segmentation, and ensuring no PII data leaves their environment.

In hybrid BYOA models, where part of the application (e.g., an agent) runs in the customer’s cloud account while the rest of the processing occurs in the provider’s SaaS environment, basic encryption alone isn’t sufficient. Additional network access controls are often required to ensure secure communication between the two environments. Another challenge is operational visibility and control. Unlike traditional SaaS, where the provider fully controls the infrastructure, BYOA introduces partially managed environments where customers may inadvertently modify settings, break configurations, or introduce inconsistencies. Managing these environments at scale requires more than just visibility—it demands automated remediation, self-healing mechanisms, and proactive operational strategies. Finally, user experience plays a critical role. A BYOA control plane must provide a seamless way for customers to trigger and manage deployments while handling the complexities of cloud-specific constraints. Balancing security, automation, and usability makes building a scalable, multi-cloud BYOA SaaS control plane an incredibly challenging task—far more complex than traditional SaaS deployments.

Conclusion

Every customer has unique infrastructure requirements, and SaaS providers must offer flexible deployment options to accommodate their needs. This could mean:

• Manual or license-based distribution for high-security, air-gapped environments.
• Fully hosted SaaS with multi-tenancy at the application, container, VM, network, or Kubernetes level.
• BYOA or BYO-VPC deployments, allowing customers to retain full control over their cloud infrastructure.

Omnistrate simplifies and streamlines all of these deployment models, eliminating the engineering complexity that typically comes with multi-cloud environments. Rather than forcing companies to choose between security, scalability, and flexibility, Omnistrate enables a hybrid SaaS approach that allows businesses to serve every market segment, from startups to global enterprises.

BYOA isn’t just a passing trend—it’s the future of SaaS.

As organizations increasingly prioritize data sovereignty, security, and cost efficiency, the ability to "go to the data" rather than requiring customers to move sensitive information to third-party environments will be essential.

Companies that embrace this flexible, multi-cloud strategy will gain a competitive advantage, unlocking new market opportunities, improving customer retention, and commanding higher valuations from investors. With Omnistrate, you’re not just building a SaaS product—you’re building a scalable, adaptable, and future-proof SaaS business that can thrive in any cloud environment.