Cloud Repatriation(Reverse Migration): The Silent Trend Changing the Tech Landscape

Over the past decade, cloud computing has emerged as a dominant and transformative technology, revolutionizing the way businesses operate. Today, it has reached a mature adoption stage, with organizations of all sizes leveraging its capabilities.

A new trend has been emerging for the last couple of years: cloud reverse migration. Companies are moving some parts of their workloads back into on-premises data centers.

According to a recent survey conducted by Citrix, 42% of organizations surveyed in the United States are considering or already have moved at least half of their cloud-based workloads back to on-premises infrastructures.

Some of the key reasons for the reverse migration are below:

Cost Concerns: Due to the exponential usage of cloud computing, some companies find it challenging to control the costs associated with usage. On-premises solutions offer more stable, cost-effective solutions for predictable workloads.

Security and data sovereignty: Security concerns play an important role in companies' decisions to move their workloads back to on-premises data centers. On-premises data centers allow companies complete control over their security measures and protocols. Also, regulatory compliance and data sovereignty laws may require specific data to be stored on-premises.

Control and Visibility: One key driver of the reverse migration trend is the desire for greater control and visibility in cloud environments. Many organizations are finding that they want more oversight of their data and applications, a need that on-premises infrastructure can better fulfill, providing a sense of reassurance about the security of their data.

Vendor Lock-in: Cloud repatriation can help companies avoid vendor lock-in with cloud providers. By moving some workloads into the private cloud or on-premise infrastructure, companies can be more flexible in their infrastructure strategy.

Performance: Businesses have understood that specific applications may not perform optimally in cloud environments. Applications with particular resource requirements or high bandwidth needs can be better supported in on-premise data centers. Additionally, applications not refactored to be cloud native can still thrive in an on-premise environment.

It's unlikely that companies will shift most of their workloads to on-premise infrastructure. However, I believe that a steady pace of cloud repatriation will continue.

Companies taking the cloud repatriation course have the option of using an on-prem data center or other dedicated environments, such as private clouds.

At Strategy Spark Advisory, we have a passion for tailoring research service solutions to meet the distinct needs of businesses in Canada and the USA. Please feel free to reach out to me at sandeep.b@strategysparkadvisory.com for any requirements.