The Hidden Costs of Choosing the Wrong Product Architecture

When a connected product succeeds, it’s often because the unseen foundations were laid well. When it struggles, the same foundations are usually to blame. The architecture you choose early on decides how your product will grow, adapt, and compete over time.

As Tomasz Badowski, VP of Industrial at Consult Red, puts it, “early architecture choices determine whether you can add capability and pivot at pace, or whether every change becomes a major engineering effort.”

Think of it like a city’s underground infrastructure. The pipes and wiring you put down early decide what can be built above ground later. Try to change them once construction has begun, and every adjustment becomes a costly disruption. The same applies to product architecture: what’s hidden beneath the surface dictates how easily you can expand, update, or integrate new technologies in the future.

The most successful connected products are those that anticipate change. They are designed with the understanding that new regulations, devices, and user expectations will always arrive faster than anyone predicts. That flexibility starts at the architectural level, ideally using open, widely adopted protocols such as OPC UA or MQTT to keep options open.

In our earlier article Build Smarter Without Starting from Scratch, we explored how connected products can evolve rather than be rebuilt. This blog looks at the foundations that make that evolution possible in the first place.

The Real Hidden Costs of Wrong Architecture

The impact of architectural decisions rarely shows up on launch day. Instead, it creeps in over time, hidden in engineering backlogs, security audits, and delayed releases.

As Tomasz points out, “one architectural flaw often triggers a chain reaction: a quick workaround leads to another patch, which then creates new complications. Over time, this can spiral into mounting technical debt, rising costs, and a product that’s increasingly difficult to maintain or evolve.”

He adds, “I’ve seen a remote monitoring device for industrial environments, for example, where the initial architecture didn’t allow for easy firmware updates. When new compliance standards came in, the team faced months of costly site visits just to update devices, something that could have been handled remotely with a more flexible modular design.”

The hidden costs of the wrong architecture can show up in several ways:

• Rework and Retrofitting: Adding new features or functionality requires revisiting core code or untangling dependencies that no one planned for.
• Performance Limitations: As usage grows, response times slow and systems strain under the weight of new data or device connections.
• Security and Compliance Gaps: Architecture that is not secure by design makes regulation updates, such as EN 18031 or PSTI, harder and more expensive to implement.
• Vendor Lock-In: Dependence on closed SDKs or proprietary stacks can block innovation or inflate licensing costs.
• Shortened Product Lifecycles: Instead of evolving through updates, the product eventually needs a complete rebuild.
• Integration Complexity: Poor fundamentals can make integration with new systems, partners, or technologies difficult. Connecting to ERPs, for example, or adding new analytics platforms becomes a project, not a plug-in.
• User-Experience Degradation: Over time, architectural limits can result in slower performance, more downtime, or a less intuitive UI that erodes customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Why It Happens

If the costs of poor architecture are so clear, why do they happen so often? The reasons are rarely technical; they’re usually human and business-driven.

Many teams are under intense delivery deadlines. The goal becomes getting a prototype out fast or hitting an MVP date. Under that kind of pressure, decisions can easily lean toward what is quick or familiar rather than what will last.

Tomasz’s advice: “move fast, but don’t cut corners on the foundations. Focus on getting a simple, working product into customers’ hands quickly, but make sure the core architecture is robust and flexible enough to evolve. You don’t need to build everything for the long term on day one, but you do need to avoid decisions that will box you in later. The best teams deliver value early and often, without building in tomorrow’s headaches.”

Fragmentation is another factor. Hardware, firmware, and cloud teams often work in isolation, each focused on their own milestones. Without a shared architectural vision, small decisions compound into long-term friction.

Uncertainty also plays a part. Few teams can see three or five years ahead, especially in markets shaped by fast-moving trends such as AI, connectivity standards, and data privacy regulation. We explored some of the common pitfalls in Key Mistakes Businesses Make When Evolving Their IoT Device – from underestimated dependencies to decisions made in silos. Without an experienced partner who’s seen these cycles before, it’s easy to underestimate how quickly today’s decisions become tomorrow’s constraints.

What Good Product Architecture Looks Like

Good architecture isn’t about picking the newest technology; it’s about designing for adaptability.

“A resilient, future-proof architecture is one that’s built for change,” says Tomasz. “Make it modular, standards-aligned and secure by design, so you can upgrade components, adapt to new regulations or integrate emerging technologies such as AI. Expect requirements to evolve, and design to scale, update, and innovate without hitting roadblocks.”

Principles of resilient design:

• Modular and Upgradable: Components can evolve independently without rewriting the entire stack.
• Secure and Standards-Aligned: Built with regulation changes in mind to reduce future compliance effort.
• Scalable and Efficient: Able to handle new data, users, or intelligence wherever it lives – cloud or edge.
• Hardware-Agnostic: Flexible enough to support future hardware, operating systems, and integrations.
• Observable and Maintainable: Designed with monitoring, analytics, and diagnostics in mind to support continuous improvement.

Consult Red’s Role: Decision Support That Pays for Itself

At Consult Red, architecture is treated as the foundation of every product journey. The team brings together expertise across hardware, embedded software, and cloud systems to help clients make the right choices from day one.

“Because we see across hardware, firmware, cloud and security,” says Tomasz, “This lets us spot risks and opportunities early, not just in one area but across the entire product lifecycle.”

That cross-functional perspective allows Consult Red to model trade-offs, compare long-term costs, and recommend solutions that remain resilient as technologies and markets evolve.

Tomasz shares a recent example: “we worked with a client planning a new industrial IoT platform. By involving our multidisciplinary team from the start, we identified a potential vendor lock-in issue and recommended a more open, modular approach. That early guidance saved them from a costly re-architecture down the line and let them scale up quickly as their business grew.”

The result is faster delivery, fewer rebuilds and a lower total cost of ownership, with fewer surprises down the road.

Future-Proof From the Start

The architecture of your connected product is more than a technical choice; it’s a strategic one. It defines how your product evolves, how quickly you can respond to market changes, and how cost-effectively you can maintain security and compliance.

As Tomasz notes, “architectures need to be modular, upgradable and standards-aligned, so you can adopt new capabilities without starting over.”

Just some of the shifts shaping product architecture that you need to consider today include:

• Edge AI & Real-Time Workloads: Intelligence is moving device-side; designs must handle new workloads and be upgradable without a redesign.
• Software-Defined Automation (IT/OT convergence): Production and processes are increasingly configurable in software; flexibility and remote updates are essential.
• Security & Open Standards: Tighter regulation and evolving threats demand secure-by-design systems that use open protocols such as OPC UA and MQTT to avoid lock-in.

“Build for the unknown, not just the now,” adds Tomasz. “A flexible foundation turns future changes into opportunities, not setbacks.”