Open Source infrastructure is often a deliberate and well-reasoned choice. It offers transparency, control and a level of flexibility that fits well with how many engineering teams like to build and operate systems. Deploying an open source load balancer or reverse proxy is usually a conscious decision, backed by solid documentation, community knowledge and proven behavior in production.

In most cases, it performs exactly as expected. Configuration is understandable, behavior is predictable and the system feels under control.

The challenge does not appear at deployment time. It emerges later, as traffic increases, environments expand and the same platform has to support more services, more changes and more operators. Configuration grows, operational tasks multiply and the margin for error narrows. Changes that were once straightforward start requiring coordination, validation and caution.

At that stage, the problem is not the software itself. The difficulty lies in operating open source infrastructure reliably as the system grows and operational demands increase.

An open-source load balancer in a growing environment

At this stage, most teams know the technology well. They trust Open Source and often run mature projects like HAProxy, NGINX, Apache, or even the SKUDONET Community Edition. These tools are proven, fast and predictable, and they give administrators full control over how traffic is handled.
As the environment grows, friction starts to appear:

  • A single configuration evolves into multiple files spread across environments
  • Changes require coordination across teams and systems
  • Visibility relies on logs that are not always centralized or easy to correlate
  • Updates and patches must be planned, tested and rolled out manually
  • High-availability setups work, but upgrading them without disruption becomes increasingly difficult

Security adds more pressure. Rules, ACLs or WAF logic exist, but tuning them safely takes effort. When something goes wrong, it is not always clear whether the issue comes from configuration, traffic patterns or the infrastructure itself.

None of this breaks the system. But it slows it down operationally. The load balancer still works, yet running it demands more time, more care and more experience than before. This is usually when teams start questioning whether relying only on community tooling is still the right model for their current scale.

The natural next step: teams start looking beyond community tools

When this point is reached, teams know what is not working and they start by looking around the ecosystem they already trust. Users of HAProxy, NGINX or Apache usually do not want to replace their stack. Instead, they evaluate the commercial or enterprise options built around the same technologies, expecting easier operation, better visibility and safer upgrades.
These editions typically promise:

  • centralized management
  • technical support
  • safer update and upgrade processes
  • additional security capabilities

The problem is that this promise does not always translate into simpler operations. Some enterprise versions keep much of the same operational complexity as the community tools, with configuration-heavy workflows and limited abstraction. Others introduce pricing models that grow quickly with traffic and environments, or platforms that are technically powerful but harder to operate on a daily basis.

SKUDONET Enterprise as the natural evolution from Open Source

SKUDONET Enterprise is designed to remove the operational friction that appears when Open Source infrastructure grows.

Configuration, traffic control and visibility are handled from a single plane, instead of being spread across files, nodes and environments. This reduces the effort required to introduce changes and lowers the operational risk.

In practice, this translates into:

  • Centralized management and visibility, without losing control over traffic behavior or routing logic
  • Simpler operations, where updates, high availability and scaling do not rely on complex or fragile maintenance workflows
  • Security that remains manageable, with clear insight into how rules behave and how traffic is affected
  • Operational continuity, even as environments, traffic volume and teams evolve

High availability, updates and maintenance are treated as part of the platform, not as separate projects that require careful coordination. Routine tasks no longer depend on manual processes or deep system-specific knowledge to be executed safely.

Integration remains straightforward. Existing architectures and deployment models stay in place, allowing teams to add Enterprise capabilities without redesigning their stack or introducing heavy control layers.

Pricing stays predictable as environments scale, avoiding the cost escalation and licensing complexity commonly associated with traditional commercial editions.
The result is a platform that preserves the technical foundations teams trust, while making infrastructure easier to operate, easier to maintain and easier to scale.

If you want to evaluate how this approach works in practice, you can try SKUDONET Enterprise with a 30-day demo and validate the fit in your own environment.