The cost doesn't suddenly drop to zero once development is done. Typically a system of this complexity and scale requires constant maintenance. You'll need some

The cost doesn't suddenly drop to zero once development is done. Typically a system of this complexity and scale requires constant maintenance. You'll need someone to be on-call (pager duty) to respond to alarms, you'll need to fix bugs, improve efficiency, apply security patches, tune alarms and metrics, etc. In my experience you probably need a small team (6-8 people) to maintain something like this. Maybe you can consolidate some things (e.g. if your system has low on-call pressure, you may be able to merge rotations with other teams, etc.) but it doesn't go down to zero.