Navigating Cloud Challenges with Repatriation

Cloud computing has transformed business operations with its scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, encouraging organisations to modernise their IT infrastructure. According to Gartner's, latest forecast, spending by end-users on public cloud services is expected to grow 20.4% to total $675.4 billion in 2024, up from $561 billion in 2023. This marks a significant rise from the $491 billion spent in 2022. This paradigm shift represents a strategic solution for business optimisation, allowing organisations to balance cost, performance, and security while meeting their unique business needs. However, as cloud adoption has matured, a notable trend has emerged - cloud repatriation.

But what is cloud repatriation? And what makes it worth our while?

Cloud repatriation involves bringing workloads and applications back from the public cloud to on-premises infrastructure or private cloud.

The initial rush to migrate to the cloud was driven by the promise of reduced capital expenditure, agility, and the allure of offloading IT management responsibilities. Many enterprises believed that they could achieve these benefits without compromising on performance or security. However, as the cloud ecosystem has matured, organisations have come to realise that the one-size-fits-all approach may not suit their unique requirements. Henceforth, for many enterprises, the bevy of challenges associated with leveraging public cloud has outpaced its perceived benefits. Enterprises express evident apprehension regarding various aspects linked to the utilisation of cloud services including:

· Cost Optimisation: According to a report by Statista, India's expenditure on public cloud services is projected to reach $13.6 billion by end of 2024, a significant increase from $4.2 billion in 2020. This rise in spending reflects the growing adoption of public cloud services by enterprises. While cloud services offer a flexible pay-as-you-go model, it is essential to manage them carefully to avoid escalating costs. Cloud repatriation offers a solution, allowing businesses to regain cost control by bringing workloads back to on-premises data centers or other cloud providers.

· Enhance security and compliance: While cloud providers invest heavily in security, some industries such as BFSI have unique requirements that demand a higher level of control over their data and infrastructure. Regulatory compliance and intellectual property protection are examples of areas where organisations may need more control than public cloud services can offer. Repatriating workloads to on-premises infrastructure or private cloud environments allows organisations to enforce their own security policies and controls. By keeping data in-house, businesses can maintain greater visibility into their security posture.

· Vendor lock-in: It poses a significant challenge as it creates a strong reliance on a single cloud provider for infrastructure, services, and applications, making it arduous for businesses to migrate their data and applications to another cloud of their preference. In response, some companies are opting to repatriate their data and applications, a move driven by the desire to evade the constraints of vendor lock-in, regain control, and maintain flexibility in selecting the most suitable cloud solutions.

· Data sovereignty: Moreover, the concept of "Data Gravity" compels organisations to maintain proximity to their data and workloads. It is becoming increasingly evident that some of an organisation's data is better suited for on-site data centers rather than cloud storage due to data sovereignty, and security. To address these challenges, organisations are thoroughly evaluating the most suitable locations for their data and workloads. Consequently, they have determined that bringing certain cloud workloads "back home" on-premises offers the potential for a superior data sovereignty.

· Latency and performance: The public cloud relies on the internet to deliver its services, which can introduce latency, bandwidth limitations, or network congestion that can affect the performance of the cloud applications or workloads. Additionally, certain businesses might require greater oversight of their workloads' performance, or specific applications could have unique hardware or software requirements that are not fulfilled by the services provided in the public cloud. To regain control and meet performance demands, some companies opt to repatriate applications to private or hybrid clouds tailored to their requirements.

Héctor García in his book Ikigai quoted, “Finding balance in all aspects of life is essential to achieving Ikigai.”

The evolving landscape of cloud computing aims at finding the right balance between existing and modern cloud workloads. Emergence of unified management platforms offers businesses the flexibility to enjoy a public cloud-like user experience within their dedicated infrastructure. This shift, expected to continue until 2024, emphasises the importance of optimising cloud resources to meet the unique needs of modern enterprises.

Repatriation is a complex process. As organisations embark on their path to enhance their cloud presence, it naturally necessitates a reconsideration of their network infrastructure and a thorough review of their current security solution architecture. Therefore, the significance of having a capable partner to guide an organisation through this complex phase cannot be emphasised enough.

-By Rajesh Awasthi, VP & Global Head of Managed Hosting and Cloud Services, Tata Communications