Do you really need separate systems when you already have Postgres?

Organizations are over-engineering their data infrastructure by adopting multiple specialized databases (Redis, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, etc.) when PostgreSQL can handle most workloads with built-in capabilities for caching, queues, search, documents, and vector embeddings. This polyglot approach creates significant operational overhead—multiple deployment strategies, backup procedures, monitoring systems, and failure modes—that disproportionately impacts IT teams without justified business returns for the vast majority of companies that never reach true scale. Technology leaders should reconsider this "premature optimization" pattern and consolidate on Postgres-native solutions, reserving specialized systems only after rigorously proving Postgres insufficient and accepting the long-term maintenance burden.