Cloud Repatriation: Futureproof your workloads with a blended approach

Ashley O'Connor
Marketing Executive
March 17, 2023

In the modern world, businesses are heavily reliant on storing data securely. As companies and industries grow, the data they produce also expands at an alarming rate and storing this can be a constant strategical headache for many. But is there a solution to ease the pressure?

WHAT IS CLOUD REPATRIATION?

For the last decade, the benefits of cloud computing have been realised by large numbers of organisations – across all industries and geographies – and the rise of the hyperscaler has made public cloud more accessible and cost effective than ever before.

However some have noted that decision-making around the cloud has come at a cost. A study from Morgan Stanley noted that every $1 in revenue growth for the largest cloud service provider resulted in a $3 in revenue decline for the company using it.
And so in more recent years, some businesses have begun to reverse their cloud strategy. Cloud Repatriation, sometimes known as unclouding, is the process of reverse-migrating application workloads and data from a public cloud to a private one, often located on-site in a data centre or to a colocation partner.

Public cloud can be a disruptive factor to workflows. It disrupts natural technology lifecycles, which IT leaders had grown accustomed to and by shifting from the cloud back to on-premise infrastructure, organisations can cut costs, save time and further optimise their data.

TO BE IGNORED? OR AN EMERGING TREND?

The predictions and whispers from technology analysts about Cloud Repatriation began in 2018, and it wasn’t taken as seriously as it is today.

The companies that were born in the cloud within the last decade, such as Netflix, now find that their requirements have changed since their initial launch and so their cloud strategies have become outdated. With the disruptions that are being caused by this weighed up with spending, this has meant that more and more companies aren’t just seeing Cloud Repatriation as an emerging trend, but more as a necessity.

Organisations can often lose sight of the end goal and underestimate the costs involved in operating in the cloud. This can be for a number of reasons, including prices increasing and not understanding what services are required. Public cloud’s traditional pay-as-you-go model can lead to unexpected big bills and significantly change cost projections.

STREAMLINED OPERATIONS

Despite being an obviously large and important factor, Cloud Repatriation isn’t just about saving money, there are other reasons why companies should consider a blended, hybrid approach.

Data, especially when it is sensitive such as personal information that is protected under GDPR, needs to be securely stored.

Public cloud providers have made steps to meet government and industry requirements with their data, but the location concern remains for companies responsible for the information. There have been cases of misconfiguration of cloud infrastructure by customers, which has led to data loss or a breach.

Another reason why it can streamline workflows is due to latency and data gravity. Reliant on internet connections to operate, this means that the cloud creates latency, causing a lag in specific areas. The areas that are generally affected by this are real-time analytics, databases, security applications and sensors. This has meant that when making changes or coming up with solutions, system architects are having to account for these disruptions.

Bringing data back in-house can shorten communication paths, which will mean that everything can be fine-tuned to suit applications and workloads in a more tailored way.

BACKING IT ALL UP

When migrations occurs, problems can arise. This can be down to a number of technical reasons which haven’t been accounted for, such as poor planning or execution, and more often than not, simply because certain workloads are just not suited to the cloud.

Moving existing problems to the cloud is not necessarily going to resolve all issues. In fact, it can cause even bigger problems. By repatriating it, organsiations are given a safer space to address problems.

Repatriation won’t be the magic bullet that fixes migration problems, but it does provide the IT team the chance to thoroughly reset and analyse what has gone wrong. This might even work as a launchpad to use the data on the cloud more effectively in the future.
One thing that always needs to be considered when having to deal with large amounts of data is the possibility of a provider failure and so there will need to be a backup plan. A provider could suddenly cease operations or they could encounter environmental problems. All businesses have backup copies of key data, but how much would they lose if this eventuality occurred?

Although extremely unlikely, this is something that has to be factored in as part of a contingency plan – and given the volatility of certain markets, cloud providers may drastically change their business model and services.

HPE GREENLAKE CENTRAL

Cloud repatriation is undoubtedly a huge thing to consider, and it requires extensive planning before undertaking the process. One way to remove some of the headache and simplify the process of Cloud Repatriation could be to adopt Hybrid Cloud Services from HPE GreenLake

The service simplifies the process with centralised operations and insights across your hybrid estate through the intuitive self-service platform, HPE GreenLake Central. It also allows you to offload monitoring and management of your on-premises cloud, helping you free up your resources to be more productive.

With a unified services view across your on-premises IT, HPE GreenLake helps you deploy services faster. This in turn will provide a wide range of benefits including IT resource savings, more downtime and holistic insights across all of your IT estate.

If you want to learn more about how you can repatriate your business, visit our Hybrid Cloud services page, or get in touch with one of our specialists today.