Olivia Pickering
Marketing Executive
September 5, 2025
Asanti’s recent whitepaper offers a sobering look at the reality of public cloud adoption. After a decade of cloud-first policies across both public and private sectors, many organisations are now rethinking their approach. At DTP, we’ve taken a close look at the findings, and we believe they signal a necessary shift toward a more deliberate, hybrid mindset. Below is our take on what the data reveals, why repatriation is on the rise, and how organisations can get back on track.
Repatriation isn’t failure. It’s refinement.
For years, the public cloud was sold as the default future of IT. It promised speed, flexibility and cost savings. But as more organisations hit year three, four and five of their cloud journey, a new story is emerging: one of overrun budgets, underperforming workloads and a dawning realisation that cloud isn’t always the right fit.
According to recent research by Asanti, 91% of organisations are now moving at least some applications back from the cloud. And it’s not because they fear innovation. It’s because they’ve matured. They’ve learned that the goal isn’t to be cloud-first. It’s to be cloud-fit.
At DTP, we see this shift playing out every day. Customers come to us not because the cloud “failed,” but because they need better balance. 67% say they wish they’d taken a hybrid approach from the start. They’re not alone. The loudest voices in IT aren’t preaching total cloud adoption. They’re advocating for clarity, control and the flexibility to pivot when needed.
So what’s going wrong?
Cloud was meant to lower costs. Yet 77% of leaders say operating costs exceeded expectations. Complex pricing models, spiralling data transfer fees and legacy applications that don’t translate well to cloud environments all add up fast.
It was also meant to accelerate change. But 44% of organisations cited internal skills gaps as a blocker. Moving to the cloud requires more than new infrastructure. It requires new thinking and teams equipped to manage it. If that development isn’t baked into the migration roadmap, things unravel quickly.
The real lesson? Be deliberate.
Repatriation isn’t a step back. It’s a signal that IT strategies are evolving. That leaders are tuning their infrastructure to their workloads, not the other way around.
Cloud still has a major role to play. But so does on-premise. So does colocation. And as AI accelerates demand for low-latency, high-volume, secure environments, more businesses are choosing to bring compute closer to home.
The takeaway here is simple: put the workload first, not the platform. And plan for change, because flexibility is more valuable than commitment.
If your cloud strategy isn’t delivering the outcomes it promised, maybe it’s time to refine, not retreat. If this is something you’d like some help in, please enquire about our Hybrid Cloud Solutions.
